Document de travail

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

François Cochard, Hélène Couprie et Astrid Hopfensitz

Résumé

Female specialization on household work and male specialization on labor-market work is a widely observed phenomenon across time and countries. Gender differences regarding characteristics (preferences, productivity) and context (wage rates, social norms) are generally recognized to explain this fact. We experimentally investigate work division by true co-habiting couples participating 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 correspond to the traditional (or power) couple case where he (or she) earns more. We show that women do not contribute more than men to the household public good whatever the situation. This result allows us to rule-out some of the standard explanations of the work division puzzle.

Mots-clés

Experiment on couples; Time allocation; Work division;

Codes JEL

  • C99: Other
  • D13: Household Production and Intrahousehold Allocation
  • J16: Economics of Gender • Non-labor Discrimination

Remplacé par

François Cochard, Hélène Couprie et Astrid Hopfensitz, « What if women earned more than their spouses? An experimental investigation of work division in couples », Experimental Economics, vol. 21, n° 1, mars 2018, p. 50–71.

Référence

François Cochard, Hélène Couprie et Astrid Hopfensitz, « What if women earned more than their spouses? An experimental investigation of work-division in couples », TSE Working Paper, n° 15-592, 30 juillet 2015, révision janvier 2017.

Voir aussi

Publié dans

TSE Working Paper, n° 15-592, 30 juillet 2015, révision janvier 2017