Are you paying the price for your partner’s career?

Presenter: Laura Langner, University of Oxford

Sociologists and economists concerned with couples’ division of labour propose that the way in which couples invest in each partner’s market human capital in terms of working hours is related to their relative wage outcomes (e.g. Becker 1991). However, a longitudinal test – using multiple time-points to test for this relationship across the life course, has not been carried out. Instead, past studies either did not make full use of the longitudinal dimension – by focusing on single or few transitions – or did ignore the couple-level over-time dependencies. Hence, it remains unclear how couples’ relative working hours are related to couples’ relative earnings over time. To close this knowledge gap, the paper uses the German Socio-Economic Panel Study. Growth-curves are employed to capture the longitudinal dimension. Parents are the focus of the analysis as parenthood is seen as the main initiator of work hour investment shifts. A dyadic index (his working hours/joint working hours) captures within-couple dependencies. Findings suggest that there is indeed a close link between the type of within-couple work hour distribution and how wage outcomes are distributed within the couple across the life course.