Division of Financial Responsibility among Mixed-Gender Couples
February 03, 2021
Summary
Exploring how mixed-gender couples divide household responsibility, the author of this working paper finds that females consistently shoulder more responsibility for household shopping than males. For financial decision making, however, responsibility aligns with income and educational standing. Gender skew in roles seems to relate to aggregate household education, though not age.
View PaperWorking Paper 2021-8
Abstract: This paper uses individuals' self-assessments of their contribution to four household activities to study how mixed-gender couples divide household responsibility. Household responsibility dynamics are characterized according to a three-point ordinal variable, whose distribution is linked to a variety of household demographics via a proportional odds model fit using survey data from both members of 327 couples. The data reveal that household tendencies depend on household demographics, albeit differently across the four activities. For household shopping, gender is the primary determinant of dynamics, with females consistently shouldering more responsibility than males. For activities more closely linked to financial decision making, however, greater responsibility aligns more with higher income and educational standing within the household. In addition, there is evidence that gender links less with role assignments in more highly educated households, but not in younger households.
JEL classification: A14, C51, D13, J16
Key words: gender roles, household finance, proportional odds model, Survey of Consumer Payment Choice
Digital Object Identifier: https://doi.org/10.29338/wp2021-08
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