A cross-national look at married women’s earnings dependency

Abstract

and the United States. When we examine the level and degree of dependency, and the labor force participation of married women across countries, the nine countries fall into the three clusters delineated in Esping-Andersen's welfare states typology. But when we examine the determinants of the dependency within each country, the clustering disappears. Wives' dependency increases with age, the presence of young children, and the number of children. It is reduced when wives' labor force participation and education are high relative to their husbands' and in families that rely more on unearned sources of income. The similarity of patterns across countries suggests that gender differences in the work-family nexus are deeply entrenched in all countries and continue even in the face of very active social policy to minimize their effects. Elect of the Population Association of America. Her current research focuses on gender inequality and parents' time allocation between work and family.Lynne M. Casper is a Statistician and Demographer in the Fertility and Family Branch at the U.S. Bureau of the Census. She conducts research on various aspects of family demography, including household and family characteristics, co-resident grandparent families, cohabitation, and child care. With Suzanne Bianchi, she is completing a research monograph on trends in the American family.Pia Peltola is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Maryland. Her research focuses on gender, work, and family issues.

Women as Main Earners in Europe

“…For example, Bianchi et al (1999) found that older women were more likely to show a higher earnings dependency on their spouses in seven out the nine countries in their study. Other empirical studies instead found no or weak association between age/cohort and relative earnings (Raley et al 2006;Bloemen et al 2013).…”

“…The majority of existing studies on the characteristics of women and men in different earning regimes, including breadwinner women, focused on the US with few exceptions, e.g. Bianchi et al (1999) who compared the US with Australia, Canada and six European countries; Drago et al (2005) and Wooden et al (2014) on Australia, and Bloemen et al (2013) on France. Most of the existing knowledge is based on data that date back to the 80s (Atkinson et al 1984;Bianchi et al 1999), 90s (Winkler et al 2005), or early 2000s (Raley et al 2006;Drago et al 2005;Bloemen et al 2013).…”

“…Bianchi et al (1999) who compared the US with Australia, Canada and six European countries; Drago et al (2005) and Wooden et al (2014) on Australia, and Bloemen et al (2013) on France. Most of the existing knowledge is based on data that date back to the 80s (Atkinson et al 1984;Bianchi et al 1999), 90s (Winkler et al 2005), or early 2000s (Raley et al 2006;Drago et al 2005;Bloemen et al 2013). In the remainder of this section we review the characteristics that were found to be associated with the distribution of couples across different earning regimes, in particular focusing on couples in the WME, EE and MME arrangements.…”

“…The comparison of different institutional and cultural settings within Europe can help us to shed light on the emergence of women as main earners and in particular on the role of welfare systems and labour market regulations (Bianchi et al 1999;Rubery 2010).…”

Who brings home the bacon? The influence of context on partners' contributions to the household income

“…These studies find that the woman's contribution to the household income is associated with her education and labour force participation (Raley, Mattingly, and Bianchi 2006), with the educational differentials (Vitali and Mendola 2014;Klesment and Van Bavel 2015) and age differentials between partners (Bloemen and Stancanelli 2013), and family size (Bianchi, Casper, and Peltola 1999). Previous studies have shown that female-breadwinner couples can represent a permanent or a temporary arrangement (Winkler, McBride, and Andrews 2005).…”