Intergenerational co-residence and married women’s labour force participation in Ghana

Abstract This paper uses a nationally representative sample of married women living with their husband from the 2021 Population and Housing Census in Ghana to study how intergenerational co-residence affects married women labour market outcomes. We use recursive bivariate probit and copula-based bivariate probit regression models to estimate the effect of co-residence with mother or mother-in-law on a wife's probability of working and/or seeking a job. We exploit differences or variations in post-marital residence patterns among different ethnic groups as our instrument to analyse the causal effect of co-residence. Our result suggests that co-residence with mother or mother-in-law has a significant positive effect on married women's labour force participation. We specifically find that co-residence increases the probability of married women working by 19.1 percentage points and that this effect which spread across both rural and urban households predominantly occurs in households with young children who need childcare and women in monogamy family (one wife one husband) as the result suggest insignificant effect on polygamous (one man married to multiple women) family. The results suggest that policies that encourage co-residence in households with young children and in monogamous families in the current ageing population would enhance young and reproductive married women to work.