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Notes -
This. The assortative selection + hiring trends means the effect is reversed from the historical
OPs referenced. The primary effect is benefiting the university, which is why they offer them.
For the tenure track spousal faculty hires I know personally 4/4 have had the wife as the primary hire, with the husband as or more capable than their wives. Additionally, there are inter-departmental considerations at play. Often the university/dean allocate only one faculty position for a department, but if the department makes a strong case a spousal hire is "necessary" they essentially get allocated an "extra" faculty slot. The net effect is that the university can hire two people of roughly equal caliber for substantially less than if they hired two people independently. The spousal offer is almost never as as good in terms of salary or startup package. In some cases the husband is essentially "free" to the university when a soft money position is offered. In this case they are responsible for funding their research from external grants and no salary is guaranteed. All they get is to have an official institutional affiliation, and maybe a lab space in the the basement. Normally a researcher who is capable of capturing that much external funding would be able to get a tenure track position at some university, but they might be willing to give that up to be able to stay with their wife.
I think it is primarily benefiting the university and most importantly their existing employees as a class. You know, university is special so we all have to vote to get ourselves tenures, spousal hiring, sabbaticals and all those other perks necessary to keep our demanding jobs of getting state to keep the grants flowing and all that.
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