Social norms and couples' division of labor

Abstract

The COVID pandemic, which forced children to attend school remotely, compelled many couples to choose one partner to stay home to care for the children. The available evidence indicates that it is more common for women to stop working in such situations than men. In this paper, we conduct an experiment to investigate, in a controlled manner, couples' behaviors in deciding who continues to work and who quits. The design allows us to investigate the relationship between the quitting decision and social norms regarding gender roles, as well as the role of peer pressure in the decision. Participants in the experiment are real-life couples recruited for the study. Other subjects drawn from the same population serve as controls. The experimental design involves both parties undertaking a real effort task for payment. At a certain point in the session, one member of the couple must stop and the other must continue the task and earn income for the couple. We find that the couples are more likely to choose the boyfriend to continue the real-effort task for money and the girlfriend to quit the task. Framing the decision as choosing whom to “quit” working rather than whom to “continue” working has a small effect on decisions. Whether choices are revealed to their peers or not does not influence the outcome. An ancillary experiment reveals that choosing husbands to work and wives to quit the labor force is considered as the norm.JEL classificationC91, D13, J16, J22, J71.