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Abstract: The surge in dual-earner couples in industrialized countries since the 1970s combined with growing support for work-family reconciliation policies has, unsurprisingly, given rise to an extensive body of social science research. For the most part this literature has focused on understanding the short-term relationship between work-family reconciliation policies and cross-national variation in work outcomes between men and women during the late 1990s and early 2000s. This paper advances current research by investigating the relationship between changes in household’s sociodemographic characteristics and variation in women’s share of couple earnings in six countries (US, UK, Australia, Switzerland, Germany, and South Korea). Using long-running harmonized household panels surveys from 2001 to 2018, this study investigates how earnings inequality unfolds over the life course among different-sex couples. Additionally, this study seeks to unveil potential contextual factors that may elucidate persistent variation in gender inequality in labor market outcomes across countries. Preliminary findings show that women with infants and preschool aged children in the household experience a decline in her earnings share in all countries, although there is substantial cross-national variation in women’s earnings share by age of youngest child. Investigating possible reasons for this cross-national variation reveal that welfare state aversion is associated with increasing women’s share of couple earnings for women with children under the age of five and a college degree, while the opposite is observed for women without a high school degree.

The Sociology Seminar Series for Trinity Term is convened by Richard Breen.  For more information about this or any of the seminars in the series, please contact sociology.secretary@nuffield.ox.ac.uk.