Do Couples Adapt to Changing Employment Patterns?

What will be the long-term effect of the emerging predominance of the dual-earner family? Perhaps women’s improved bargaining position based on their increasing share of family earnings will mean that housework and childcare are no longer exclusively “women’s work”. Alternatively, if gender identities remain fundamental to contemporary society there is little reason to believe that the economic emergence of women will lead to anything other than women working a ‘second shift’. Cross-sectional studies of the domestic division of labor show a persistently gendered allocation of domestic tasks (though the husbands of employed wives do a greater share of the household’s domestic work). However, cross-sectional evidence cannot distinguish between causal processes and selection bias. This study uses data from three national household panel surveys (from the UK, Germany and the US), which provide, for the first time, direct evidence that the balance of domestic labor between men and women in couples is influenced by changes in their own and their spouses' participation in paid work. The study provides evidence that women make larg