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What if women earned more than their spouses? An experimental investigation of work-division in couples

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

François Cochard ,
Hélène Couprie  and
Astrid Hopfensitz Open the ORCID record for Astrid Hopfensitz [Opens in a new window]
François Cochard*
Affiliation:
CRESE EA3190, Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté, 25000 Besançon, France
Hélène Couprie*
Affiliation:
Université de Cergy-Pontoise (THEMA), 33 Bd du Port, 95011 Cergy-Pontoise, France
Astrid Hopfensitz*
Affiliation:
Toulouse School of Economics, University of Toulouse Capitole, 21 Allee de Brienne, 31000 Toulouse, France
*
fcochard@univ-fcomte.fr
helene.couprie@gmail.com
astrid.hopfensitz@tse-fr.eu
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Abstract

Female specialization on household work and male specialization on labor-market work is a widely observed phenomenon across time and countries. This absence of gender neutrality with respect to work-division is known as the “work-division puzzle”. Gender differences regarding characteristics (preferences, productivity) and context (wage rates, social norms) are generally recognized as competing explanations for this fact. We experimentally control for context and productivity to investigate preferences for work-division by true co-habiting couples, in a newly developed specialization task. Efficiency in this task comes at the cost of inequality, giving higher earnings to the “advantaged” player. We compare behavior when men (or women) are in the advantaged position, which corresponds to the traditional (or power) couple case where he (or she) earns more. Women and men contribute equally to the household public good in all conditions. This result allows us to rule out some of the standard explanations of the work-division puzzle.

Keywords

Experiment on couplesTime allocationWork-division

JEL classification

C99: Other D13: Household Production and Intrahousehold Allocation J16: Economics of Gender • Non-labor Discrimination
Type
Original Paper
Information
Experimental Economics , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , March 2018 , pp. 50 - 71
Copyright
Copyright © 2017 Economic Science Association

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Footnotes

Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-017-9524-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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