Bringing Home the Bacon: Marital Allocation of Income-Earning Responsibility, Job Shifts, and Men's Wages

Three dominant perspectives on the allocation of household responsibilities suggest that married couples are likely to assign more income-earning responsibility to the husband.... Married men are likely to be more attentive to opportunities to increase their earnings and to risks that could reduce their earnings. Using data from the [U.S.] National Longitudinal Survey of Youth this study focuses on mens job-shift processes. Findings indicate that married men are more likely than single men to pursue job-shift patterns that result in greater wage gains and to avoid those that result in lower wage gains and that a portion of the marriage differential in mens wages is attributable to job-shift processes. (EXCERPT)