Working Wives and Major Family Expenditures: Replication and Extension

This paper updates and replicates an earlier study comparing purchases by working wives (employed outside the home) and nonworking wives and the amounts spent for time-saving durables, other durables, and hobby and recreation items. Using a 1977 data base similar to one gathered a decade earlier, wife's labor force behavior was again found not to be significantly related to either purchase or expenditure decisions for time-saving durables, when income, stage of life cycle, and other situational variables were held constant.