Spousal age gap and identity and their impact on the allocation of housework

Abstract

This study investigates how spousal age gaps influence the allocation of housework between husbands and wives. Further, we consider the identity formed as a result of respondents’ family backgrounds by specifically exploring the effects of the age gaps between the respondents’ parents. We initially collect an individual-level panel dataset covering the periods before and after marriage, by monthly surveys of unmarried persons in the initial period prior to marriage, then the three-year period that follows. After controlling for individual- and time period-fixed effects, the key findings are as follows: (1) after marriage, women older than their husbands tend to become burdened with a larger amount of housework, and the spousal gap effect increases as the marriage duration increases; (2) women with mothers older than their fathers tend to assume a larger allocation of the housework as the marriage duration increases; and (3) the age gap hardly affects the men’s allocation of housework, although men with a full-time working mother at age 15 assume a larger allocation of housework as the marriage duration increases.