Qualitative essay planning

Schwartz, C. R., & Gonalons-Pons, P. (2016). Trends in relative earnings and marital dissolution: Are
wives who outearn their husbands still more likely to divorce?. RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation
Journal of the Social Sciences, 2(4), 218-236.

 More women in workforce means women more likely to earn more than husbands than
before
 Done in America
 Wage gap getting better
 4% outearn in 1970, 22% in 2007
 May threaten mens gender identity as breadwinners and therefore increase conflict and
divorce
 Theoretical perspectives
 “economic independence hypothesis”
 Findings are mixed
 “gendered institutional change” lens
 Hetero marriage is an institution governed by gender relations and expectations
 Gender performativity, gender as an accomplishment
 WMMM may have negative outcomes due to non normative power relations that threaten
men
 People may attempt to compensate by being more normative in other ways
 “Specialization with gender identity threat hypothesis”
 “asymmetric egalitarianism hypothesis” equal is fine, men more is fine, women more is bad
 WMMM mens self esteem worse but women don’t when they earn less
 Men less bothered by this than before
 Outearning may increase risk of divorce but not as much as before
 Methods
 Based on data from PSID (may not be relevant or generalisable)
 Results
 More wives outearning now than before
 1969 was 13%, 2005 was 27% (more than 100% increase)
 Wives typically don’t earn more by much
 Wives who don’t earn more don’t not earn more by much
 Wives who earn more are more likely to be educated
 Wives who earn more are typically more economically disadvantaged
 Risk of divorce increases the more wives outearn
 Risk is lower when husbands are financially dependent on outearning wife
 Risk lower if wife earns 70% of total income
 As economy changes 2 paychecks are needed more
 Women may increase their labour force participation when anticipating divorce
 Discussion
 Outearning as a predictor of divorce was a thing but is way less now
 Probably because gendered conceptions and expectations have changed
 Less risk of divorce if both need to work, more if the wife chooses to work
 Linked to education
 When both work they have less time for eachother
  When both are professional they have less time for eachother and wife may stop working to
do domestic stuff and childcare due to long inflexible hours
 When both working class jobs, have more flexible hours so can split up time and
childcare/domestic responsibilities better
 Beliefs on who should raise kids plays a part, highly educated mothers under pressure to
quit and raise kids
 Societal shift from breadwinner homemaker model to dual earner model
 Societal shift from rigid gender specialisation to increased egalitarianism and flexibility
around husbands and wives economic roles in marriage

Murray-Close, M., & Heggeness, M. L. (2018). Manning up and womaning down: How husbands and
wives report their earnings when she earns more. US Census Bureau Social, Economic, and Housing
Statistics Division Working Paper, 20.

 Introduction
 People are subject to social norms through self and external identification
 How well a person adheres to norms affects their sense of self
 Data shows that couples avoid outearning arrangements
 People may not marry or wives may stop working to avoid outearning
 Outeraning increases chance of divorce
 When outearning, both parties are likely to over/underemphasise earning
 Variable means
 22.9% of couples are outeraners
 Non traditional, inflate husband earning and devalue wives
 Husbands do this more than wives
 Non traditional do it less than traditional wives
 Non traditional wives earn more than double those of employed trad
 Employed non trad husbands earn less than half of trad husbands
 Non trad wives 30% more likely to have college degree
 Non trad husbands 20% less likely
 Non trad couples almost twice as likely to be black
 Trad and non trad couples similar in age
 Regression results
 Women less likely to believe men should be breadwinners
 Husbands more likely to misrepresent earnings and by more
 As expected, husband-respondents deflate the earnings of nontraditional wives more than
wife-respondents do. But contrary to our expectations, husband respondents inflate the
earnings of non-traditional husbands less than wife-respondents do
 Conclusions
 When married couples in the CPS-ASEC violate the norm that husbands outearn their wives,
the survey respondents reporting the couples’ earnings appear to minimize the violation by
inflating the earnings of the lower-earning husbands and deflating the earnings of the higher-
earning wives


Cochard, F., Couprie, H., & Hopfensitz, A. (2018). What if women earned more than their spouses?
An experimental investigation of work-division in couples. Experimental economics, 21(1), 50-71.
 Introduction
 In couples, women, especially mothers, tend to withdraw from work and do domestic
whereas men tend to increase hours at work
 Even when women outern they still do more domestic
 Absence of gender neutrality is known as the “work-division puzzle”
 2 possible explanations:
 Benefits from dom work relative to LMW differ between men and women
 OR gender norms lead women to do more dom work
 Therefore, policies to get women more LMW wont work if norms aren’t addressed
 Problem with research is that its had to measure dom work productivity
 Social norms are a big deal
 Homemaker-breadwinner may be more efficient due to task specialisation
 Evidence proves that women do more dom work and childcare than men
 Women considered to more friendly and cooperative and so better at cooperation
 Social norms, and cognitive dissonance from straying from them can influence behaviours
