Two decades of the complementary leisure effect in Spain

Abstract

This work attempts to gauge the impact of the so-called complementary leisure effect (or shared leisure effect) on the increase in the labour force participation rates of older males who live with a partner observed in Spain since the mid-1990s. The principal novelty of the work is that the whole the period throughout which said phenomenon has been occurring (1995–2016) is taken into consideration. Another important point of attention related to this effect is that the current analysis spans the years covering the recent global economic and financial crisis (GFC) and those which immediately followed. Results reveal that the complementary leisure effect has proved to be determinant explaining the behaviour of older male activity rates in Spain since the mid-90s. More concretely, the increases in wives’ labour force participation can explain 67% of the total change in husbands’ participation rates from 1995 to 2016. Moreover, during the years of the GFC (2008–2013) and without this effect, the participation rate of Spanish older men would have decreased below 57%, almost 8 percentage points less than the value actually reached. The findings that emerge from our study suggest that economic policy should consider opening up a further avenue of action, one which does not tend to be envisaged, and which, in the case of Spain, is absent from recent legal reform, namely, targeting not only the individual but also the whole family unit of older persons as a legal goal.