Jinfeng Xu (University of Lausanne)
This paper examines the economic role of marriage-based kinship networks by ana lyzing how an in-laws death affects individual labor market outcomes. Using Swiss administrative data (20102022) and a matched difference-in-differences design, I ex ploit the premature mortality of parents-in-law (ages 4065) as a quasi-experimental shock. I find that an in-laws death causes a persistent 5.5% decline in annual earnings, concentrated almost entirely among women: daughters-in-law suffer earnings losses of 15.6% following a mother-in-laws death. Mechanism analysis attributes most of these declines to the loss of informal childcare rather than grief or eldercare burdens. The penalty disappears upon the death of a high-earning father-in-law, suggesting that the accompanying wealth transfer relaxes household liquidity constraints and enables more efficient labor market reallocation within the couple. These findings reveal the distinct socioeconomic roles of in-lawsmaternal time-intensive support versus paternal finan cial stabilityand underscore that female labor force participation is deeply embedded in the stability of extended family structures.