New Research Challenges Old Assumptions About Gender And Earnings In Marriage

The long-term dynamics of married couples' earnings and financial responsibilities within marriages have important implications for both gender inequality and broader economic disparities. Marriage is often conceptualised as a partnership, but the dynamic nature of how couples share financial duties over time has been largely unexplored. A recent landmark study published in Research in Social Stratification and Mobility challenges previous assumptions and finds that gender-egalitarian earnings patterns are more prevalent than previously assumed. Focusing on the long-term trajectories of spousal earnings, the study provides insight into how economic homogamy plays out within marriages, emphasising the role of socio-economic factors in shaping these patterns.

According to a release, economic contributions within a marriage are not static; they fluctuate in response to life events, employment opportunities, and external circumstances. By adopting a long-term perspective, the new study sheds light on the various ways financial patterns develop within marriages and how these patterns relate to broader social inequalities.

"I study how couples share work and family responsibilities over the course of long-term relationships and how gender plays a role in these decisions," said study author Allison Dunatchik, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of South Carolina. "We know that in recent decades, people are increasingly likely to marry someone with a similar level of education and income as themselves. But what happens after marriage? I wanted to understand how common gender-egalitarian earnings patterns are in the long term within different-gender couples and what those patterns typically look like."

In this study, Dunatchik uses a long-term, group-based approach to examine the simultaneous development of husbands' and wives' earnings over the course of first marriage. Drawing on data from a cohort of late Baby Boomer men and women in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, she used Dual Group-Based Trajectory Modelling (GBTM) to identify key earnings patterns among husbands and wives over up to 30 years of marriage and analyse how spouses' long-term earnings patterns relate to one another within couples.

"Somewhat to my surprise, I found that gender-egalitarian earnings patterns were relatively common among couples when we take a long-term perspective-and are more common than when we take a short-term approach," Dunatchik told PsyPost. "Overall, I found that about 60% of couples follow gender-egalitarian long-term earnings patterns-but these patterns manifest in three different ways, which are highly stratified by couples' socio-economic status."