Abstract
Despite women’s recent gains in education and employment, husbands still tend to out-earn their wives. This article examines the relationship between the partner pay gap (i.e. the difference in earned income between married, co-resident partners) and life satisfaction. Contrary to previous studies, we investigate the effects of recent changes in relative earnings within couples as well as labour market transitions. Using several waves of the UK Household Longitudinal Study, we reveal that men exhibit an increase in life satisfaction in response to a recent increase in their proportional earnings relative to their wives’ earnings. For women, changes in proportional earnings had no effect on life satisfaction. We also find secondary-earning husbands report lower average life satisfaction than majority-earning and equal-earning men, while such differences were not found for women. The analysis offers compelling evidence of the ongoing role of gendered norms in the sustenance of the partner pay gap.
Highlights
Research on relative earnings within couples suggests that men tend to substantially out-earn their female partners
Using multiple waves of the UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS), we examine the effect of recent changes in within-couple earnings inequality as well as recent changes in labour force position, allowing us to better control for habituation and to portion out concurrent and, potentially, competing predictors of life satisfaction
The vast majority of men and women were continuously employed across t and t−1, though men were more stable with 92% of the male sample continuously employed in stable full-time or part-time jobs, compared to women who were less stable at 75%
Summary
Research on relative earnings within couples suggests that men tend to substantially out-earn their female partners Our analysis allows us to uncover the relationship between gendered identities, earning position within the household and well-being, extending current knowledge by offering new insights into the role of normative structures on working practice. Using multiple waves of the UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS), we examine the effect of recent changes in within-couple earnings inequality as well as recent changes in labour force position, allowing us to better control for habituation and to portion out concurrent and, potentially, competing predictors of life satisfaction. The analysis offers compelling evidence of the role of gendered norms on the sustenance of the partner pay gap, with men found to earn a ‘psychological dividend’ from recent increases in proportional household earnings, and a ‘psychological penalty’ when they are out-earned by their female partners
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