Wage Uncertainty and Intra-Household Labor Allocation: Evidence from an Emerging Economy
Keywords:
Wage Uncertainty, Intra-Household Labor Allocation, Labor Supply, Regional Economic Disparities, Household Economic ResilienceAbstract
Wage uncertainty represents an important source of economic insecurity, potentially influencing household employment decisions, income stability, and labor allocation. In this study, the authors analyzed the regional economic situation related to wage insecurity and allocation of labor resources within the family in Russia over the period 2000-2019. Secondary economic data such as regional consumer price indices, gross regional product per capita, minimum wage indicators and annual working days were used in this quantitative descriptive approach. Regional economic disparities, fluctuations in inflation, and the working calendar changes were analyzed with descriptive statistics and comparative trend analysis. The results showed that in 2019, there were significant disparities in the nominal economic output per capita between the Russian federal districts, with the Ural Federal District having the largest GEP per capita. Inflation across the region has dropped from 20.36% in 2000 to 3.05% in 2019 but with occasional spikes, suggesting the presence of economic instability. The number of working days per year was fairly constant during the period observed. These results identified the regional variations of the economic situation that could affect the ability of the household to spend and also their employment. However, the wage uncertainty effects could not be estimated directly due to the lack of wage history data and data on household labour supply. More research is needed that combines longitudinal information on the household to examine the ability of households to adjust their labor supply and their economic resilience.
References
Agostinelli, F., Ferraro, D., Qiu, X., & Sorrenti, G. (2024). Intra-household insurance and the intergenerational transmission of income risk (No. w32096). National Bureau of Economic Research.
Alem, Y. (2026). Clean Cooking in the Global South: A Critical Synthesis of Causal Evidence and a Future Research Agenda. South African Journal of Economics, 94(4), e70037.
Banerjee, D., & Klasen, S. (2022). Conditional cash transfers to mothers, intrahousehold allocations: the role of unobservability. International Journal of Economic Policy Studies, 16(1), 275-296.
Brudevold-Newman, A., Donald, A., & Rouanet, L. (2025). Steered Away from the Fields: Impacts of Mechanization on Agricultural Production and Intra-Household Labor Supply.
Casco, J. L. (2024). Intra-household resource shares under poverty transfers: evidence from Ecuador. Review of Economics of the Household, 22(3), 1243-1274.
Djeraimi, H. (2025). Poverty and Microeconomic Analysis: Exploring Economic Realities and Policy Implications in Low-Income Contexts.
Ferraro, D., Agostinelli, F., Qiu, X., & Sorrenti, G. (2025). Intra-Household Insurance and the Intergenerational Transmission of Income Risk. Available at SSRN 5157307.
Grabowska, M. (2026). Intra-Household Relative Income and Happiness: The Role of Unpaid Work Division During COVID and Afterwards (No. 2026-28).
Jose, A. (2024). Income shocks and intrahousehold resource allocation: evidence from rural Ethiopia.
Kureishi, W., Paule-Paludkiewicz, H., Tsujiyama, H., & Wakabayashi, M. (2025). Stuck in a marriage: Labor market shocks, divorce and intra-household reallocation.
Le, V. L., Bui, T. A., Nguyen, A. N., & Nguyen, N. M. (2025). Intra-Household Power and the Division of Unpaid Work: A Nash Bargaining Model With an Application to Vietnam (No. 196).
Lukwago, M. M., Micheal Okello, D., & Mugonola, B. (2025). Institutional and technical drivers of intra-household marketing decisions for smallholder farmers in Uganda: evidence from Northern Uganda. Cogent Food & Agriculture, 11(1), 2498775.
Majumder, A., & Mitra, C. (2023). Estimation of sharing rule: An application of intra-household collective model on Indian data. Indian Growth and Development Review, 16(1), 74-90.
Martin, L. (2024). The intra-household distribution of administrative burdens. The Economic and Social Review, 55(3, Autumn), 387-456.
Munro, A. (2025). Intra-household experiments. In Handbook of Experimental Development Economics (pp. 136-166). Edward Elgar Publishing.
Patte, T. (2026). Initial intra-household bargaining power and the impact of income generating programs on women’s economic outcomes: Evidence from a personal initiative training in Lomé, Togo.
Wang, J. (2026). The impact of unexpected events and household financial fragility. Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, 62(2), 325-347.
Zamnius, A. (2026). Replication data for: Family labor supply and wage shocks in an emerging market: Evidence from Russia (Version 1) [Data set]. Mendeley Data. https://doi.org/10.17632/hyp72txmvm.1
Zhou, A., & Mahadeshwar, R. (2024). The impact of intra-household income hiding on labor productivity.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Dr Nisha Solanki
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
