The Happy Homemaker? Married Women's Well-Being in Cross-National Perspective

A long-standing debate questions whether homemakers or working wives are happier. Drawing on cross-national data for 28 countries, this research uses multi-level models to provide fresh evidence on this controversy. All things considered, homemakers are slightly happier than wives who work fulltime, but they have no advantage over part-time workers. The work status gap in happiness persists even controlling for family life mediators. Cross-level interactions between work status and macro-level variables suggest that country characteristics—GDP, social spending, women's labor force participation, liberal gender ideology and public child care—ameliorate the disadvantage in happiness for full-time working wives compared to homemakers and part-time workers.