Comparing West Germany and the United States, we analyze the association
between equity - in terms of the relative gender division of paid and unpaid
work hours – and the risk of marriage dissolution. Our aim is to
identify under what conditions equity influences couple stability. We apply
event-history analysis to marriage histories using data from the German
Socio-Economic Panel for Western Germany and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics
for the United States for the period 1986 to 2009. For the United States, we
find that deviation from equity is particularly destabilizing when the wife
under-benefits, and when both partners’ paid work hours are similar. In
West Germany, equity is less salient. Instead we find that the male breadwinner
model remains the single most stable arrangement.