How Gender Identity Determines the Chore Wars
(2015) NEKN01 20151Department of Economics
- Abstract
- Existing theories of how spouses divide the household labour have conflicting implications. Standard models of comparative advantages and bargaining models both predict that when a woman earns more money than her husband she will do less household work. However, identity theory predicts that deviating from prescribed gender behaviour causes discomfort, and therefore a woman could compensate for violating traditional gender roles by increasing her household work when she earns more money than her husband.
Histograms over the distribution of relative wages and households show a discontinuity at the point where the wife starts earning more money than her husband. This finding not only proves that there is self-selection in the data, but it... (More) - Existing theories of how spouses divide the household labour have conflicting implications. Standard models of comparative advantages and bargaining models both predict that when a woman earns more money than her husband she will do less household work. However, identity theory predicts that deviating from prescribed gender behaviour causes discomfort, and therefore a woman could compensate for violating traditional gender roles by increasing her household work when she earns more money than her husband.
Histograms over the distribution of relative wages and households show a discontinuity at the point where the wife starts earning more money than her husband. This finding not only proves that there is self-selection in the data, but it also points at the prominent role gender identity plays within households. By comparing the results of both OLS and FE regressions, I can disentangle the effects of gender-awareness and of relative wages on the division of chores within households. I show that the total amount of household work done in a household depends on the couples’ level of gender-awareness. Furthermore, I show that gender identity has stronger explanatory power than comparative advantages and bargaining power on the behaviour of spouses when the woman earns more money than the man, even in the less gender-aware couples. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/5469417
- author
- Ericsson, Sanna LU
- supervisor
- organization
- alternative title
- A study of relative wages, gender identity and division of household labour
- course
- NEKN01 20151
- year
- 2015
- type
- H1 - Master's Degree (One Year)
- subject
- keywords
- family labour supply, household bargaining, home production, relative wages, gender identity
- language
- Swedish
- id
- 5469417
- date added to LUP
- 2015-06-30 10:55:22
- date last changed
- 2015-06-30 10:55:22
@misc{5469417, abstract = {{Existing theories of how spouses divide the household labour have conflicting implications. Standard models of comparative advantages and bargaining models both predict that when a woman earns more money than her husband she will do less household work. However, identity theory predicts that deviating from prescribed gender behaviour causes discomfort, and therefore a woman could compensate for violating traditional gender roles by increasing her household work when she earns more money than her husband. Histograms over the distribution of relative wages and households show a discontinuity at the point where the wife starts earning more money than her husband. This finding not only proves that there is self-selection in the data, but it also points at the prominent role gender identity plays within households. By comparing the results of both OLS and FE regressions, I can disentangle the effects of gender-awareness and of relative wages on the division of chores within households. I show that the total amount of household work done in a household depends on the couples’ level of gender-awareness. Furthermore, I show that gender identity has stronger explanatory power than comparative advantages and bargaining power on the behaviour of spouses when the woman earns more money than the man, even in the less gender-aware couples.}}, author = {{Ericsson, Sanna}}, language = {{swe}}, note = {{Student Paper}}, title = {{How Gender Identity Determines the Chore Wars}}, year = {{2015}}, }