Household Specialization And The Male Marriage Wage Premium

Abstract

Empirical research has consistently shown that married men have substantially higher wages, on average, than otherwise similar unmarried men. One commonly cited hypothesis to explain this pattern is that marriage allows one spouse to specialize in market production and the other to specialize in home production, enabling the former-usually the husband-to acquire more market-specific human capital and, ultimately, earn higher wages. The authors test this hypothesis using panel data from the National Survey of Families and Households. The data reveal that married men spent virtually the same amount of time on home production as did single men, albeit on different types of housework. Estimates from a fixed effects wage equation indicate that the male marriage wage premium is not substantially affected by controls for home production activities. Household specialization, the authors conclude, does not appear to have been responsible for the marriage premium in this sample.V irtually all wage regressions including an indicator of marital status find that married men have substantially higher wages than do not-married men, even after controls are added for observable human capital andjob characteristics. The magnitude varies but is quite large, with typical values indicating that married men receive a wage premium of 10-30%. While the empirical evidence of a marriage premium for men is incontrovertible, the precise nature of the relation has not yet been convincingly explained. A leading theory is that specialization within the household

New Evidence Against a Causal Marriage Wage Premium

“…It posits that wives’ contributions to unpaid labor allow husbands to increase effort in paid labor (Becker 1991), increasing husbands’ wages relative to single men who do not benefit from the sexual division of labor. Consistent with this perspective, marriage is associated with less time in household labor for men, particularly in female-typed tasks (Gupta 1999, Hersch and Stratton 2000). Cohabiting men might also experience wage gains from specialization compared to men living singly, but for men living singly no premarital increase in wages is predicted.…”

“…For example, Killewald and Gough (2013) use the fact that married women, too, experience a wage premium to argue against the specialization explanation for married men’s higher wages. More directly, Hersch and Stratton (2000) and Pollmann-Schult (2011) show that men’s time in housework does not substantially mediate the male marriage premium. Given these results, we assume that, if marriage does affect men’s wages, it does not do so primarily through household specialization or discrimination.…”

“…Married men experience wage advantages compared to both never-married and divorced men (Cheng 2016, Chun and Lee 2001, Cohen 2002, Cornwell and Rupert 1997, Ginther and Zavodny 2001, Hersch and Stratton 2000, Killewald and Gough 2013, Korenman and Neumark 1991), with some evidence of marriage premia increasing with marital duration (and the reverse for divorce) (Cheng 2016, Ginther and Zavodny 2001, Korenman and Neumark 1991). …”

“…Cohabiting men might also experience wage gains from specialization compared to men living singly, but for men living singly no premarital increase in wages is predicted. Since divorce is associated with increases in men’s housework time compared to remaining married (Gupta 1999, Hersch and Stratton 2000), specialization also predicts a decline in men’s wages following divorce.…”

“…The benefits of marriage for men’s wages are of long-standing interest to both economists and sociologists (Cheng 2016, Chun and Lee 2001, Cohen 2002, Cornwell and Rupert 1997, Dougherty 2006, Ginther and Zavodny 2001, Gray 1997, Hersch and Stratton 2000, Killewald and Gough 2013, Korenman and Neumark 1991, Loh 1996). Traditional fixed-effects models typically estimate that marriage increases men’s wages by about 5 to 7 percent (Cornwell and Rupert 1997, Dougherty 2006, Killewald 2013, Killewald and Gough 2013).…”