In the context of women’s increased economic status coupled with declining divorce rates, the “gender revolution framework” suggests that greater gender equality in the division of labor has contributed to the stability of contemporary marriages. Yet recent research on this topic is not in consensus that this is the case. This study uses the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to test the hypothesis that progress toward gender egalitarianism, and associated changes in the relationship between the division of labor and divorce, is bifurcated across levels of education in the highly stratified United States. The results indicate modest support for the idea that the college educated have been vanguards of the progression of the gender revolution, but also that different forms of gender egalitarianism may have emerged across groups. Among college-educated couples, gender egalitarian and gender-specialized arrangements have similar risks of divorce in recent years, in line with an egalitarian essentialist perspective. Among less educated couples, results suggest that progress toward gender equality in paid labor may reflect economic need rather than shifting gender norms. Together, these findings illustrate how structural and cultural changes in the organization of work and family life have played out differently across levels of education.
Kimberly McErlean (Mon,) studied this question.