Married Men Earn More if Wives Do the Housework
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James Joyner | Wednesday, June 22, 2005 |
Married men earn more if wives do the chores? (Reuters)
Married men earn more than bachelors so long as their wives stay at home doing the housework, according to a report Wednesday from Britain’s Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER). Academics Elena Bardasi and Mark Taylor found that a married man whose wife does not go out to work but is primarily responsible for the cooking and cleaning earns about 3 percent more than comparably employed single men. But that wage premium disappears if wives go out to work themselves or don’t do most of the housework.
“It has been fairly well documented that married men earn more than single men,” Taylor, a labor economist, told Reuters. “However, our research established the wage premium is related to the wife doing the chores,” said the academic who teaches at the University of Essex in eastern England.
This stands to reason, really. If someone is able to come home and relax, they’re going to have more energy to devote to work. Presumably, the same results for obtain for women with stay-at-home husbands, although the sample would be much smaller.
About the Author: James Joyner is the publisher of Outside the Beltway and the managing editor of the Atlantic Council. He's a former Army officer, Desert Storm vet, and college professor with a PhD in political science from The University of Alabama. He lives just outside the Beltway in Alexandria, Virginia with his wife and infant daughter.
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Or, men who make more can afford to have their women stay home and do the chores?
This seems like a great case of correlation but not causation.
What Bryan said. Do people get *paid* for such poor logic? Sheesh.
As if they would actually do the chores.
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