Gender identity and relative income within households: evidence from Sweden

In their study of relative income within US households, Bertrand et al. (2015, Quarterly Journal of Economics 130, 571–614) show that the distribution of the wife's share of household income drops sharply where the wife starts earning more than her husband. They attribute the drop to a gender n...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Scandinavian journal of economics 2022-07, Vol.124 (3), p.744-772
Main Authors: Hederos, Karin, Stenberg, Anders
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Gender gap
Gender identity
gender norms
Gender roles
Households
marriage market
Prescribing
Spouses
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Summary:In their study of relative income within US households, Bertrand et al. (2015, Quarterly Journal of Economics 130, 571–614) show that the distribution of the wife's share of household income drops sharply where the wife starts earning more than her husband. They attribute the drop to a gender norm prescribing that a wife's income should not exceed her husband's income. We document a similar drop in Swedish data. However, we also show that there is a spike where spouses earn exactly the same. Excluding the equal‐earning spouses, the drop is small and mostly statistically insignificant. We conclude that, if anything, we find only weak evidence that Swedish couples comply with this gender norm.
ISSN:0347-0520
1467-9442
1467-9442
DOI:10.1111/sjoe.12477