Money isn’t everything: Wives’ earnings and housework time

Abstract

The autonomy perspective of housework time predicts that wives’ housework time falls steadily as their earnings rise, because wives use additional financial resources to outsource or forego time in housework. We argue, however, that wives’ ability to reduce their housework varies by household task. That is, we expect that increases in wives’ earnings will allow them to forego or outsource some tasks, but not others. As a result, we hypothesize more rapid declines in wives’ housework time for low-earning wives as their earnings increase than for high-earning wives who have already stopped performing household tasks that are the easiest and cheapest to outsource or forego. Using fixed-effects models and data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we find considerable support for our hypothesis. We further conclude that past evidence that wives who out-earn their husbands spend additional time in housework to compensate for their gender-deviant success in the labor market is due to the failure to account for the non-linear relationship between wives’ absolute earnings and their housework time.

Equality at home - A question of career? Housework, norms, and policies in a European comparative perspective

“…The result also shows, consistent with previous research, that time availability, relative resources, and gender ideology have an important impact on the division of housework (e.g., Aassve, Fuochi, and Mencarini 2014;Evertsson and Nermo 2007;Fuwa 2004;Killewald and Gough 2010;Kan 2008). Nevertheless, the analysis indicates that occupational positions within a couple are relevant to understanding how time is allocated to cope with the demands of work and home.…”

“…The relative-resources bargaining approach suggests that housework will be more equally divided within couples where both partners possess similar resources. Previous research confirms this assumption: women tend to decrease their time spent on housework as their earnings increase, but, whatever the earning arrangements, they contribute more time to housework than men only to a certain point (Aassve, Fuochi, and Mencarini 2014;Bittman et al 2003;Brines 1994;Davis and Greenstein 2004;Evertsson and Nermo 2007;Greenstein 2000;Killewald and Gough 2010). There is also evidence that highly educated men spend more time on housework and childcare than less-educated men (Sullivan, Billari, and Altintas 2014), while highly educated women spend less time on housework than less-educated women (Treas and Tai 2016).…”

Do significant labor market events change who does the chores? Paid work, housework, and power in mixed-gender Australian households

“…However, we find no evidence that either the negative association between men's terminations and men's housework time, or the positive association between men's terminations and women's housework time, is driven by long-term health shocks. 35 Our findings are consistent with those of Killewald and Gough (2010) who find that low-earning women change their housework hours more than others. They hypothesize that such women initially spend more time on housework and find it easier and cheaper to outsource or forego housework than women earning higher wages, who have already made the easy adjustments.…”

“…Various hypotheses have been floated in the sociology, demographic, and economic literatures that could explain the role of gender. One such explanation is that women who earn more money in the formal market than they feel is socially acceptable will try to compensate for this supposed transgression by performing more labor in the home (Killewald and Gough 2010), otherwise termed 'doing gender' (West and Zimmerman 1987;Brines 1994;Bittman et al 2003). Another hypothesis is that institutional constraints present in the wider society (including workplaces) push households to specialize more than they would like to do (as discussed in Pedulla and Thebaud 2015).…”

Zabawa czy rutyna? Podział czynności związanych z opieką nad dzieckiem pomiędzy kobietę i mężczyznę w gospodarstwach domowych w Polsce

“…2008;Bianchi i in. 2000;Folbre & Bittman 2004;Killewald & Gough 2010]. Różnice między mężczyznami i kobietami mogą przy tym maleć na skutek zmniejszenia zaangażowania kobiet i nie muszą wynikać ze zwiększenia udziału mężczyzn.…”