Migration and economic activity of wives of union soldiers, public and private sector workers in Brazil in 2010

Abstract Union military personnel may, as part of their mission, be required to migrate every 2 or 3 years. While the military man’s career is assured in this situation, his wife may not have enough stability to develop her career in the labor market. The objective of this work is to analyze how migrations and spouses’ career may affect women’s participation in the formal labor market. For this purpose, logit models were used, comparing the results for wives of military personnel, other civil servants and formal workers in the private sector, controlling for the migration time of couples, among other variables. The results show that wives of military personnel participate less in the formal job market than wives of other workers. Wives who have migrated are also less likely to be in the formal market than those who have not, irrespective of the husband’s activity, unless they migrated before the husband and the husband is in the military. Military wives are less likely to be in the formal market at any time of migration, even if they migrate before their husbands.