Exit, Voice, and Suffering: Do Couples Adapt to Changing Employment Patterns?

Abstract

What is the long-term effect of the emerging predominance of the dual-earner family? This study uses data from 3 national household panel surveys—the British Household Panel Survey (N= 16,044), the German Socioeconomic Panel (N= 14,164), and the U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics (N = 7,423)—which provide, for the first time, clear and direct longitudinal evidence of change in the balance of domestic labor within couples: evidence that women make large adjustments in their domestic work time immediately upon entering full-time paid work and that men exhibit a less obvious pattern of lagged adaptation, showing larger increases in domestic work in successive years.