Breadwinning or on the breadline? Female breadwinners’ economic characteristics across 20 welfare states

Abstract

In analysing heterosexual couples’ work–family arrangements over time and space, the comparative social policy literature has settled on the framework of the ‘male-breadwinner’ versus the ‘dual-earner’ family. Yet, in assuming men in couple-families are (full-time) employed, this framework overlooks another work–family arrangement, which is the ‘female-breadwinner’ couple. Including female-breadwinner couples matters because of their growing prevalence and, as our analysis shows, greater economic vulnerability. We perform descriptive and regression analyses of Luxembourg Income Study microdata to compare household incomes for female-breadwinner couples and other couple-types across 20 industrialized countries. We then consider how labour earnings and benefit incomes vary for ‘pure’ breadwinner couples – comprising one wage-earner and one inactive/unemployed partner – according to the gender of the breadwinner. We find that pure female breadwinners have lower average individual earnings than male breadwinners, even after controlling for sociodemographic characteristics and occupational and working-time differences. Furthermore, welfare systems across most countries are not working hard enough to compensate for the female breadwinner earnings penalty, including in social-democratic countries. Once controls are included in our regression models, it never happens that pure female breadwinners have higher disposable household incomes than pure male breadwinners. Thus, our study adds to a growing body of evidence showing that female-breadwinner families sit at the intersection of multiple disadvantages. In turn, these couples offer comparative scholars of the welfare state an ‘acid test’ case study for how effectively families are protected from social risk. Our results additionally highlight how cross-national differences in the female breadwinner income disadvantage do not fit neatly with established welfare typologies, suggesting that other factors – in particular, labour market characteristics and the economic cycle – are also at play.

Retraditionalisation? Work patterns of families with children during the pandemic in Italy

“…Crucially, and differently from Qian and Hu (2021), we distinguish between pure and modified female breadwinners, as the economic characteristics of these two couple types are essentially different (Kowalewska and Vitali 2021), and using these categories can give us a better understanding of possible signs of retraditionalisation in work patterns among partners.…”

Crossing Social Boundaries in an Immigration Context: Exogamy and Gendered Employment Patterns in Unions in Germany

“…In order to understand the meaning of the breadwinner arrangement, we need to focus on the patterns of women and men separately. Previous studies have shown gender differences in how mixed unions are formed [ 71 ], and that the determinants of mixed unions and the meaning of a male breadwinner arrangement are different from those of a female breadwinner arrangement [ 64 ]. We found that the effects in the models were stronger for non-migrant men than for non-migrant women, especially for the unions with a non-European partner.…”

“…However, even if this arrangement is not the one that is preferred by the man and his migrant partner, the couple will try to achieve an economic situation and a household income that the partners can live on until the migrant partner can participate in the labor market in the desired way. This contrasts with the working and earning conditions of women and the negative effects of a female breadwinner model [ 64 ]. Therefore, this situation seems comparable to that of women in eastern Germany, who, on average, make larger contributions to the household income than women in western Germany [ 101 ].…”

“…However, this arrangement cannot be described as a male breadwinner arrangement with changed gender roles, as it appears to be a rather fragile arrangement that can be challenging for both partners [ 62 ], in part because women are more likely than male breadwinners to work in atypical or low-skilled employment [ 78 : p. 164]. A very recent study on female breadwinner couples has shown that female breadwinning is associated with a higher risk of having a low household income, as women tend to earn less than men [ 64 ].…”

Bringing Women on Board? Family Policies, Quotas and Gender Diversity in Top Jobs

“…Whereas full-time employment -or at least long part-time employment -is common for women in Nordic countries, short part-time employment is widespread among women in most Anglo-Saxon and Continental countries. Meanwhile, although many women across post-Soviet countries, Southern Europe and the United States work full time, male breadwinning is also prevalent (Kowalewska and Vitali, 2020;Lewis et al, 2008).…”