Wage Effects of Couples’ Divisions of Labour across the UK Wage Distribution
利用英国家庭面板数据，分析夫妻在无薪家务和有薪工作上的分工如何影响各自工资，发现只有高薪男性从分工中获益，而女性则面临工资惩罚。
Specialisation and gender theories offer competing hypotheses of whether men’s and women’s wages rise or fall based on the couple’s division of household unpaid and paid labour, and how effects differ across the wage distribution. We test division effects by analysing British panel data using unconditional quantile regression with individual fixed effects, controlling for own hours in housework and employment. We find only high-wage men’s wages were significantly greater when their partners specialised in routine housework, and when they were the sole breadwinner. Conversely, low- and high-wage partnered women incurred significant wage penalties as their share of housework exceeded their partners’. Wages for low-wage men and median- and high-wage women also decreased as their share of household employment increased. We conclude only elite partnered men benefit from specialisation. Everyone else is either better off or no worse off with equitable household divisions of paid and unpaid work.