Within-couple specialisation in paid work: A long-term pattern? A dual trajectory approach to linking lives

Abstract

Research on the division of labour has mainly focussed on transitions between individuals' labour market states during the first years of parenthood. A common conclusion has been that couples specialize--women in unpaid and men in paid work--either due to gender ideologies or a comparative advantage in the labour market. But what happens later in life? The German Socio-Economic Panel now provides researchers with a continuous measure of working hours across decades of couples' lives, enabling a dual trajectory analysis to explore couples' long-term specialisation patterns. I focus on the career trajectories of West German couples, and specifically, due to the relatively low institutional and normative support for female employment during its members' early years, on the 1956-65 female birth cohort. Even in this setting and with a conservative estimate, a surprisingly small number of couples--only a fifth--adopt full specialisation in later life. A sizable proportion--a third--moves into dual full-time employment. This trend is even more common among highly educated couples: half of those couples move into dual full-time employment. I find that highly educated women are not only less likely to permanently specialise but also more likely to try working full-time, possibly because their partners' comparative advantages are lower. But despite high opportunity costs, 45% of highly educated parents never try to pursue a dual career either because of a satiation of material wants or because of low societal support for maternal employment. The latter phenomenon is further underscored by the finding that many couples' increase in working hours occurs only when a youngest child is a teenager.

Educational assortative mating and couples’ linked late-life employment trajectories

“…In principle, divisions of labor established early in life can develop over the life course in three ways: persistence, change or accumulation/reinforcement. To date, research on the stability and change of couples' division of paid work over the life course has strongly focused on the impact of crucial life events, prominently the transition to parenthood (e.g., Kühhirt, 2012;Langner, 2015). The findings support a more traditional division of paid labor after the birth of the first child, even among previously gender-egalitarian couples.…”

“…4 The age of the youngest (or last) child at the moment of the survey consists of the categories youngest age tertile, medium age tertile and oldest age tertile, complemented by dummy variables for the number of children. 5 Less traditional women postpone marriage and parenthood to establish careers (Langner, 2015). Hence, male breadwinner arrangements would be less likely among older couples with no or few children or who had children late.…”

“…First, we add to the understanding of couples' late-life employment and their retirement timing. Few studies adopted a life course perspective on joint retirement (e.g., Blau, 1998;Denaeghel, Mortelmans, & Borghgraef, 2011;Henretta, O'Rand, & Chan, 1993;Ho & Raymo, 2009;Szinovacz & DeViney, 2000) and most life course studies on retirement timing assessed how midlife experiences affect the timing of either men's or women's retirement (Damman, Henkens, & Kalmijn, 2011, 2015Finch, 2014;Hank, 2004;Madero-Cabib, Gauthier, & Le Goff, 2015;Raymo, Warren, Sweeney, Hauser, & Ho, 2010). These studies did not examine both partners simultaneously and disregarded long-term employment trajectories by isolating retirement transitions, which is at odds with the central theoretical importance of long-term trajectories in the life course paradigm (Elder, et al, 2003).…”

“…Second, we add new evidence on the role of educational assortative mating for the gendered division of paid (and unpaid) work between partners. Most theoretical arguments and empirical studies on the division of labor in couples are restricted to earlier life stages, women or both, that is, women in earlier life stages, usually in the presence of young children (e.g., Bernasco, et al, 1998;Han & Moen, 1999;Kühhirt, 2012;Langner, 2015;Pienta, Burr, & Mutchler, 1994;Stier, Lewin-Epstein, & Braun, 2001). Some research has looked into changes in the division of household labor after retirement (Leopold & Skopek, 2015Szinovacz, 2000), whereas to our knowledge no studies have examined the division of market work among older couples over relatively long windows of time.…”

Looking to the Future of Work and Family Theory and Research: Some Reflections

“…She found that even in this setting, and at a conservative estimate, a surprisingly small number of couples—only one‐fifth—adopted full specialization in later life, whereas a full third moved into (or back into) dual, full‐time employment. This trend is even more pronounced among highly educated couples: Half of those couples moved into dual full‐time employment (Langer, ). A longitudinal perspective, then, informs us that the specialization that might occur around childbearing ages is in many cases reversed later in the life course.…”