Does female breadwinning make partnerships less healthy or less stable?
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Does female breadwinning make partnerships less healthy or less stable? Gigi Foster 1
& Leslie
S. Stratton 2
Received: 8 July 2019 / Accepted: 25 May 2020/ # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Social norms can have a persistent influence on outcomes. Since the end of World War II, men have been the primary breadwinner in most households in the developed world, and US data from the late twentieth century suggests violation of this norm stresses partnerships. Is this still true? We examine whether female breadwinning makes partnerships less healthy or less stable using more recent US and Australian data. We find a much more modest association in both countries between female breadwinning and measures of relationship health or stability in OLS models for mixed-gender couples than has been found in prior studies. Transitions into female breadwinning are problematic mainly for cohabiting couples and especially so for younger people and less-educated men. These results suggest that social norms may be weakening, but mating market dynamics may also play a role. We find some evidence that cohabiting women in Australia who out-earn their partners subsequently re-partner with men who have higher earnings relative to themselves. Keywords Marital dissolution . Satisfaction . Economics of gender . Social norms .
Earnings differentials JEL codes J12 . J16 . I31 . Z13
Responsible editor: Shuaizhang Feng
* Gigi Foster [email protected] Leslie S. Stratton [email protected]
1
University of New South Wales, Gate 2, High Street, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia
2
Virginia Commonwealth University, 301 W. Main St., Box 84-4000, Richmond, VA 23284-4000, USA
G. Foster, L. S. Stratton
1 Introduction Examining histograms of women’s share of earned income in mixed-gender households in the USA, Bertrand et al. (2015)—hereafter BKP—document a sharp decline in density beyond the 50% mark. They follow this observation with econometric evidence that female breadwinning is negatively associated with marital satisfaction and partnership stability. They argue that these results, based on data from a variety of national surveys fielded from the late 1960s through the early 2000s, are consistent with US residents’ adherence to a norm that a wife should not earn more than her husband. The implication is that realizing female empowerment in practical terms within the household may create stress—possibly even for women themselves—and that this stress may act as an obstacle to social change. Yet much has changed in the last 50 years, and this has not gone unnoticed by academics (e.g., Blau et al. (2006), who compiled the edited volume “The Declining Significance of Gender” in 2006). Simple statistics also reflect the changes. In 1967, only 46% of married women were employed and they contributed only about 26% of family income. In 2015, the comparable figures were 61% and 37%. Gender wage differences also declined significantly during this time period, with full-time, yearround female workers’ wages hovering a
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