When equity matters for marital stability: Comparing German and U.S. couples.

Abstract

Comparing West Germany and the United States, we analyze the association between equity - in terms of the relative gender division of paid and unpaid work hours - and the risk of marriage dissolution. Our aim is to identify under what conditions equity influences couple stability. We apply event-history analysis to marriage histories using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel for Western Germany and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics for the United States for the period 1986 to 2009. For the United States, we find that deviation from equity is particularly destabilizing when the wife under-benefits, and when both partners' paid work hours are similar. In West Germany, equity is less salient. Instead we find that the male breadwinner model remains the single most stable arrangement.