gender and the division of household labor in older couples

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http://jfi.sagepub.com/content/28/3/399The online version of this article can be found at:

DOI: 10.1177/0192513X06296427

2007 28: 399Journal of Family IssuesKarsten Hank and Hendrik Jrges

European PerspectiveGender and the Division of Household Labor in Older Couples : A

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Gender and the Division ofHousehold Labor inOlder Couples

A European Perspective

Karsten Hank

Hendrik JrgesMannheim Research Institute for the Economics of Aging,University of Mannheim, Germany

Using microdata from the 2004 Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in

Europe (SHARE), this study takes a cross-national perspective to investigate

the division of household labor among older couples (aged 50 years or more).

Across nine continental European countries, the authors find considerable

variation in the overall distribution of housework between partners, withmore egalitarian countries in northern Europe and more traditional countries

in southern Europe. A multilevel analysis shows that about half of the

between-country variance in the division of housework is due to differences

in older couples characteristics, but that there are no country-specific effects

of the main microlevel explanatory variables. Finally, the authors find a sig-

nificant effect of macrolevel gender inequalities on couples division of

housework, suggesting that older couples living in more gender-egalitarian

countries are more likely to exhibit an equal sharing of household labor.

Keywords: gender; division of household labor; older couples; Europe;

SHARE

Research on productive aging is growing rapidly (cf. Morrow-Howell,Hinterlong, & Sherraden, 2001; OReilly & Caro, 1994). Most of therelated literature deals with involvement of the elderly in volunteering (e.g.,

Caro & Bass, 1995; Erlinghagen & Hank, 2006), grandparenting (e.g.,

Hayslip & Kaminski, 2005; Pebley & Rudkin, 1999), or other work usuallyperformed for parties outside the individuals household. However, work

performed within ones own household also has a substantial economic

value. Without home production, one would have to buy substantially

Journal of Family Issues

Volume 28 Number 3

March 2007 399-421

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more household services on the market (e.g., de Ruijter, Treas, & Cohen,

2005; Stoller & Cutler, 1993). Although gender differences in other types

of unpaid or informal work are also recognized (e.g., Herzog & Morgan,1992; Hook, 2004), they are particularly pronounced in the division of

housework between spouses. Despite some changes across cohorts, with

more recently born women doing less and their male partners doing

somewhat more (both relative and total), today men generally contribute

at most one third of core housework tasks (e.g., Bianchi, Milkie, Sayer,

Folbre, & Matheson, 2000; Breen & Cooke, 2005; Shelton & John, 1996).

Several studies dealing with postretirement changes in couples division

of household labor show that the total amount of housework done mayincrease after retirement for both men and women, but that the traditional

preretirement pattern largely persists (e.g., Dorfman, 1992; Solomon,

Acock, & Walker, 2004; Szinovacz, 2000). So far, however, the division of

household labor among older couples has not been analyzed in a cross-

national perspective. Recent investigations for the general population

strongly suggest that macrolevel factors, particularly gender inequalities,

play a significant role in the distribution of housework between spouses

(e.g., Breen & Cooke, 2005; Davis & Greenstein, 2004; Fuwa, 2004).Using data on couples aged 50 and older derived from the Survey of

Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), this article estimates

hierarchical linear models to investigate the relationship between societal

context and the division of routine household labor in nine continental

European countries. Before presenting the empirical analysis, we will

briefly review the linkage between micro- and macrolevel aspects of

gender and housework.

400 Journal of Family Issues

Authors Note: Both authors contributed equally to this article. We are grateful for comments

by two anonymous reviewers. This research was supported by the European Community Fifth

Framework Programs Quality of Life project under EC Contract QLK6-2002-002426

(AMANDA). This article is based on data from Early Release 1 of SHARE 2004, which is pre-

liminary and may contain errors that will be corrected in later releases. The SHARE data col-

lection has been funded primarily by the European Commission through the Fifth Framework

Program (Quality of Life Project QLK6-CT-2001-00360). Additional funding came from the

U.S. National Institute on Aging (U01 AG09740-13S2, P01 AG005842, P01 AG08291, P30

AG12815, Y1-AG-4553-01, and OGHA 04-064). Data collection in Austria (through theAustrian Science Fund, FWF) and Switzerland (through BBW/OFES/UFES) was nationally

funded. Please address correspondence to Karsten Hank, Mannheim Research Institute for the

Economics of Aging, University of Mannheim, Building L 13, 17, D-68131 Mannheim,

Germany; e-mail: [email protected].



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Gender and the Division of Housework

Various economic models play a prominent role in much of the literatureon household labor. Although the new home economics approach, put forward

by Becker (1981), proposes that men and women specialize to maximize

household utility or efficiency, the resourcebargaining power perspective

focuses on power relations in the family (based on, for example, educational

or income differentials between the partners), and the economic dependency

model is centered on the assumption that women are forced to exchange

household labor in return for economic support from a male breadwinner (cf.

Brines, 1993; Greenstein, 2000, for example). These theories are compatiblewith general formulations of the relative resource hypothesis (a person with

higher income will do less housework) and the time availability hypothesis (a

person who spends more time in paid work will spend less time in house-

work), which are putatively gender neutral, emphasize choice, and assume

that housework allocation is governed by the rules and principles of exchange

relations (Coltrane, 2000, p. 1214; see also Shelton & John, 1996, pp. 304ff.).

However, it has been suggested that womens employment, time avail-

ability, resources, conscious ideology, and power do not account for whywives still do the bulk of family work (Thompson & Walker, 1989, p. 857)

regardless of demographic or life-course characteristics. The partners

gender appears to be so influential that it is often considered to be the sin-

gle most important determinant of the division of household labor. Theories

on socializationgender role attitudes, for example, contend that people

socialized to believe in gender-segregated work will conform to those

beliefs (e.g., Coverman, 1985; Cunningham, 2005). Thus, men and women

with traditional attitudes are expected to share less housework, whereas

men and women with nontraditional attitudes are expected to share house-

work more equally. It is assumed that people are automatically socialized

into rigid gender roles from childhood onward, going along with the devel-

opment of relatively fixed attitudes and/or deeply gendered personalities.

These strict assumptions are rejected by more recent gender construction

theories that incorporate the symbolic and performance dimensions of gender

(cf. Shelton & John, 1996). As Coltrane (2000) posits, Doing specific house-

hold tasks provides opportunities to demonstrate to oneself and to others that

one is a competent member of a sex category with the capacity and desire toperform appropriately gendered behaviors (p. 1213). Thus, housework pro-

duces not only household commodities but also gendered identities through-

out the life course.

Hank, Jrges / Division of Household Labor 401



5/24

Gender ideology determines what a proper gender role is. Just as gender

ideologies vary across individuals (e.g., Greenstein, 1996), the social con-

struction of gender is highly context dependent and varies across nations orcultures. Mason (1997) defines the societal gender system as

the socially constructed expectations for male and female behavior that are

found (in variable form) in every human society. A gender systems expecta-

tions prescribe a division of labor and responsibilities between women and

men and grant different rights and obligations to them. (p. 158)

Resulting macrolevel gender inequalitiesthat may be promoted or ame-

liorated by the welfare state (Orloff, 1996; see also Geist, 2005)materi-

alize in various spheres (cf. Huber, 1990) such as the educational system

(e.g., Jacobs, 1996), the labor market (e.g., Chang, 2000), or the political

arena (e.g., Elder, 2004). Naturally, they are also reflected in spouses divi-

sion of work in the family (e.g., Sarkisian & Gerstel, 2004; Sundstrm &

Duvander, 2002; Thompson & Walker, 1989) and in the household. Thus,

Coltrane (2000) suggests that the almost universally observed pattern of

household labor

can only be understood by attending to the symbolic significance of house-

hold labor in the social construction of gender and by analyzing the social,

cultural, economic, and political contexts in which men and women form

families, raise children, and sustain households. (p. 1208)

Starting from Baxters (1997) five-country studycovering the United

States, Sweden, Norway, Canada, and Australiaa number of studies have

explicitly investigated the division of housework in advanced industrializedsocieties from a cross-national perspective (for an analysis of less devel-

oped countries, see, for example, Sanchez, 1993, 1994). A universal find-

ing is that wives contribution to household chores is still greater than their

husbands, even in the most egalitarian countries (e.g., Davis & Greenstein,

2004). More differentiated insights can be derived from recent work using

multilevel modeling. For example, Batalova and Cohen (2002), who focus

on the role of premarital cohabitation, show that national cohabitation rates

in countries with higher levels of overall gender equality have equalizing

effects on couples division of housework regardless of their own cohabita-

tion experience. Fuwa (2004) elaborates on the role of macrolevel gender

inequalities, arguing that male control over the political economy and

male dominated ideologies at the macrolevel may act as discount factors




6/24

against the power of individual womens resources (p. 752; see also

Blumberg, 1984). Thus, she expects that individual-level factors will have

weaker effects on the division of household labor for women who live incountries with less pronounced gender equalityand vice versa. Using the

same data source (the 1994 International Social Survey Programme; ISSP)

and selection of 22 countries on which the study by Batalova and Cohen

(2002) is based, Fuwa (2004) indeed finds that women living in less egalitar-

ian countries benefit less from their individual assets in the negotiation of

housework. This is supported by an analysis of a subset of countries from the

1994 ISSP, which shows that equal sharing of household tasks is particularly

rare in countries with a conservative welfare state regime, independent ofthe partners relative resources, time availability, or gender ideology (Geist,

2005). Finally, utilizing the 2002 ISSP on Gender Roles, Stier and Lewin-

Epstein (2005) examine the effects of employment-supportive policies,

gender inequalities in the labor market, and general attitudes toward gender

roles on households division of unpaid work in 25 countries. Although it is

shown that employment policies have no direct effect on couples division of

labor, the authors findings suggest that gender inequalities in the labor

market and a countrys gender ideologies do affect the level of gender equal-ity in the family.

To our knowledge, though, no cross-national research has been carried

out yet that pays particular attention to the gendered division of household

labor among older couples. Filling in this gap for continental Europe, our

study complements recent time-use research that points to significant inter-

gender and intercountry differences in time-use patterns at older ages (cf.

Croda & Gonzalez-Chapela, 2005; Gauthier & Smeeding, 2003). It also

adds a European perspective to the so far almost exclusively U.S.-centered

literature on the division of housework in later life, particularly after retire-

ment. And finally, it investigates possible interactions between couple char-

acteristics and the households country of residence in determining patterns

of household labor.

Method

Data

The data for our study are drawn from the 2004 SHARE (see http://www

.share-project.org for more information). The SHARE is modeled closely

after the U.S. Health and Retirement Study, and it is the first European data




7/24

set to combine extensive cross-national information about the socioeco-

nomic status, health, and family relationships of the elderly population (see

Brsch-Supan et al., 2005). Release 1 of the data contains informationabout some 22,000 individuals aged 50 or older from 15,000 households in

10 countries, representing Europes economic, social, institutional, and cul-

tural diversity from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean, including Sweden,

Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, France (excluded from our study

because of missing macrolevel information), Switzerland, Austria, Italy,

Spain, and Greece. Probability samples have been drawn in each participat-

ing country; the weighted average household response rate in the face-to-face

part of the survey is 62 percent (a thorough description of methodologicalissues is contained in Brsch-Supan & Jrges, 2005).1 Our analytic sample

was restricted (a) to respondents living in a marital or nonmarital union at the

time of the interview and (b) to couples for whom at least one partner filled

out the surveys self-completion questionnaire (which includes the question

on which our dependent variable is based). This results in a total of 4,135

observations (see Table 1 for details).

VariablesThis article deals with routine housework (Coltrane, 2000, p. 1210). The

construction of the dependent variable modifies Davis and Greensteins

(2004) measure, taking advantage of the fact that the SHARE provides both

partners assessments of who takes the primary responsibility for routine

household chores (see Lee & Waite, 2005, for a discussion of alternative mea-

sures). This is a major improvement over existing data sets such as the ISSP.

The (generic) English version of the SHARE questionnaire asks, Who in the

couple takes or took the main responsibility for cooking, cleaning the house,laundry and ironing? with five answer categories: myself only, myself

mainly, myself and my partner equally, my partner mainly, and my

partner only (coded 1 through 5). Because this question was posed to both

partners, responses were relabeled to distinguish husbands from wives. To

account for possible discrepancies in spouses responses (cf. Kamo, 2000;

Lee & Waite, 2005), we use the mean of their respective answers. This infor-

mation has been recoded, resulting in a variable ranging from 0 (both part-

ners agree that the wife does all housework) to 1 (both partners agree that thehusband does all housework).2

On the right-hand side of the regression, we use a set of standard micro-

level explanatory variables including the partners age, education, (gross)

income,3 employment status, and health, as well as information about the




8/24

405

Table1

DescriptiveStatistics

Austria

Germany

Sweden

Netherlands

Spain

Italy

Denmark

Greece

Switzerland

Genderdivisionofhouseholdlabor

.203

.242

.262

.252

.156

.179

.295

.130

.2

45

Proportionofcoupleswith

.105

.172

.167

.166

.088

.112

.236

.065

.1

43

equaldivision

oflabora

Maleincomefemaleincome

.630

.681

.550

.738

.739

.678

.519

.692

.6

35

Maleinlaborfor

ce

.241

.315

.405

.348

.255

.227

.467

.408

.4

29

Femaleinlaborforce

.200

.293

.450

.270

.126

.154

.462

.214

.3

81

Unmarriedcoupl

e

.038

.048

.083

.039

.076

.017

.077

.012

.0

48

Couplesmeanage

62.268

62.900

63.664

62.004

65.309

62.922

61.228

60.511

63.2

35

Malefemaleage

difference

3.005

2.513

2.898

2.736

2.730

3.663

3.014

5.750

2.8

62

Male,higheduca

tionaldegreeb

.272

.366

.298

.261

.070

.085

.336

.220

.3

12

Female,highedu

cationaldegreeb

.143

.235

.312

.139

.035

.098

.379

.144

.1

90

Householdincom

e(naturallog)

9.456

10.178

10.689

10.527

9.133

9.202

10.857

9.169

10.4

27

Maleretiredfrom

laborforce

.697

.589

.554

.495

.651

.746

.484

.557

.5

19

Femaleretiredfromlaborforce

.470

.431

.461

.140

.135

.368

.427

.241

.3

92

Numberofchildren

2.107

1.939

2.540

2.434

2.727

2.137

2.353

2.079

2.2

28

Malecaresforgrandchildren

.277

.284

.339

.392

.267

.222

.362

.199

.2

01

Femalecaresfor

grandchildren

.339

.332

.415

.446

.349

.305

.396

.230

.2

17

Malelimitedbyhealthproblems

.437

.479

.390

.367

.393

.327

.387

.246

.2

75

Femalelimitedb

yhealthproblems

.425

.503

.423

.476

.487

.376

.405

.250

.3

33

Onlymaleresponseavailable

.036

.032

.099

.068

.023

.066

.048

.030

.0

53

Onlyfemaleresp

onseavailable

.050

.031

.106

.080

.023

.051

.066

.046

.0

16

GEM

.746

.849

1.000

.888

.583

.181

.979

.000

.7

49

N

419

587

605

664

341

410

351

569

189

Note:GEM=

Un

itedNationsgenderempowermentmeasure.

a.Shareofcoupl

eswithvaluesequaltoorlargerthan.5forthedivisionofho

useworkvariable.

b.InternationalS

tandardClassificationofEducationcategories4orhigher.

Source:SHARE

2004(Release1),authorscalc

ulations.



9/24

partnersmarital status and family responsibilities (see Table 1 for descriptive

statistics). One advantage of our data is that we have true couple information,

that is, individual data for each question asked of each partner. This advan-tage also complicates matters because each individual variable type enters the

analyses twice. Overall, we have thus opted for rather parsimonious but

robust specifications.

We measure household income by the relative income position in each

country. More precisely, we compute country-specific income quintiles,

which enter the regression as a set of dummy variables. This has the addi-

tional advantage of combining flexibility in functional specification with ease

of interpretation. We treat differences in the partners income as an indicatorof relative resources. Relative income of partners is coded as a set of dummy

variables for which the baseline category represents couples whose individ-

ual income is in the same country-specific (individual) income quintile. Thus,

the two dummy variables indicate whether the female partner is in a higher

or lower income quintile than the male partner.

Employment status is used as an indicator of time availability. In the

SHARE, respondents are asked to self-report employment status by select-

ing one of the following categories: (a) retired, (b) employed or self-employed, (c) unemployed, (d) permanently sick or disabled, and (e)

homemaker. We code as working all respondents who say they are currently

employed or self-employed. The employment status variable is also used to

create an indicator for past labor force status (retired), which may have last-

ing effects for retired couples (see below for a discussion).

Because less traditional gender ideologies have been shown to be closely

associated with cohabitation (Batalova & Cohen, 2002; Cunningham, 2005;

South & Spitze, 1994), union type is used to account for the gender ideol-

ogy dimension at the level of couples.

We measure the age (or cohort; this is equivalent in cross-sectional data)

of a couple by the average age of both partners. Age differences between

partners, which might indicate intracouple power relationships, are also

included as control variables. They are measured as the male age minus the

female age. Education enters the analysis as one dummy variable for high

education for each partner, where high education is equivalent to an

International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) code of 4 or

higher (beyond upper secondary education).Past and current family responsibilities are measured by the number

of children the couple has and by a dummy variable that equals 1 if the

respondent said that during the past 12 months, he or she has regularly or




10/24

occasionally looked after grandchildren without the presence of the

parents.

The SHARE contains a large amount of information about the respon-dents health status (including specific diagnoses, symptoms, etc.). In the

context of our study, we are particularly interested in the effect of health-

related limitations on daily activities (such as housework). Our health indi-

cator is derived from a global activity limitation question: For the past 6

months at least, to what extent have you been limited because of a health

problem in activities people usually do? (1) severely limited, (2) limited, but

not severely, (3) not limited. In the empirical part, we do not distinguish

between degrees of limitation.Our main concern, however, is the role of societal factors in older cou-

ples division of household labor. Like Batalova and Cohen (2002) and

Fuwa (2004), we use the United Nations gender empowerment measure

(GEM; see United Nations Development Program, 2004) as a core measure

of macrolevel gender inequalities. The GEM is an index based on the per-

centage of parliamentary seats held by women, the percentage of female

administrators and managers, the percentage of professional and technical

workers who are women, and womens share of earnings income. It rangesfrom 0 to 1, where higher scores represent greater levels of empowerment

for women. Because the GEM is not available for France, this country was

excluded from our analysis.

Analytical Strategy

To investigate the interaction between micro- and macrolevel determinants

of older couples division of household labor, we estimate hierarchical linear

models (Bryk & Raudenbush, 1992). This and similar kinds of multilevel

modeling have become a popular alternative to estimating separate models

for each country (or other levels of context) in the analysis (see Teachman &

Crowder, 2002, for a review). We follow a stepwise procedure, starting with

the empty Model 0, which includes no independent variables at all and

examines the overall couple- and country-level variances. In Model 1, all

couple-level characteristics are entered into the regression with fixed effects

across countries. In Model 2, we allow the coefficients of the three main

couple-level variablesthe malefemale income gap, the partners employ-ment status, and union typeto vary across countries. Finally, Model 3

includes cross-level interactions between the GEM and the intercept as well

as the slopes of the three main couple-level variables.




11/24

Empirical Findings

Before presenting our multivariate results, we will briefly discuss twomain descriptive findings, displayed in Figure 1. First, there is an obvious

northsouth divide in the gender division of labor in the SHARE countries.

This is reflected in the distribution of the proportion of couples in which the

partners share household tasks equally (including the small number of cases

where the husband does more). Although, for example, in Greece and Spain

less than 10 percent of couples aged 50 and older exhibit an equal division of

labor in the household, this is the case in about 17 percent of Dutch, German,

and Swedish couples. The top rank is held by the Danes, where one out offour couples shares core household tasks equally.4 Second, there is strong

indication for a close relationship between the division of household labor

among older couples and macrolevel gender inequalities.5 Plotting the pro-

portion of couples with an equal division of housework against the GEM

reveals a clear positive association. The four countries with above average

proportions of older couples sharing housework equallythe Netherlands,

Sweden, Germany, and Denmarkare also the ones with the highest GEM

scores (.8 or more). Similar associations are also found with single items ofGEM, such as the proportion of female members of parliament or the

femalemale wage ratio (details not shown here).

We now turn to the multivariate analysis (see Table 2; note that positive

coefficients indicate a larger share of the male partner in total housework).

In Model 0, the between-country variance of the intercept is statistically

significant. The variance components in this empty model suggest that

about 10 percent of the overall variance in the division of housework is due

to between-country variance (cf. Bryk & Raudensbush, 1992). A similar

order of magnitude is reported in the studies by Fuwa (2004) and Stier and

Lewin-Epstein (2005), for example. Including couple-level variables in

Model 1 reduces the variance of country-level intercepts by almost half

(from .0030 to .0017) and the couple-level variance by 7 percent (from

.0279 to .0259). Turning to our main microlevel explanatory variables, we

find an asymmetric effect of relative income: Men with a lower income than

their female partners tend to do somewhat more housework than those hav-

ing about the same income as their partners (where equal income is defined

as being in the same income quintile), but the difference is not statisticallysignificant (cf. Bittman, England, Sayer, Folbre, & Matheson, 2003).

However, if the wife earns less than her husband, the husbands share in

household duties is significantly lower than in couples with about equal




12/24

income. With regard to time availability, we find that mens participation

in the labor force also decreases males participation in household chores,

whereas if the female partner engages in paid work, her husbands share of

household labor increases. Finally, living in a nonmarital union also increases

mens participation in housework strongly, supporting the view that cohabi-

tation goes hand in hand with less traditional gender ideologies.Both male and female higher education, which is also likely to be posi-

tively correlated with less traditional gender ideologies, contributes to a

more gender-equal division of housework (e.g., Coltrane, 2000). Older


Figure 1

Gender Empowerment Measure and Shares of Couples With

Egalitarian Division of Household Labor Across Europe

Note: at = Austria; ch = Switzerland; de = Germany; dk= Denmark; es = Spain; gr = Greece;

it = Italy; nl = Netherlands; se = Sweden.

Source: SHARE 2004 (Release 1), authors representation.



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410

Table2

DeterminantsofCouples

DivisionofHousework:ResultsofHierarchicalLinearModels

Model0

Model1

Model2

Model3

SE

SE

SE

SE

Intercept

.2176**

.0184

.2177**

.0147

.2175**

.0141

.2172**

0.0064

GEM

.1168**

0.0194

Maleincomefemaleincomea

.0234**

.0065

.0246*

.0077

.0246*

0.0088

GEM

.0089

0.0250

Maleinlaborfor

ceb

.0454**

.0111

.0461**

.0117

.0452**

0.0119

GEM

.0227

0.0212

Femaleinlaborforceb

.0618**

.0079

.0616**

.0086

.0620**

.0096

GEM

.0115

.0252

Unmarriedcoupl

e

.0493**

.0121

.0600**

.0160

.0527*

.0177

GEM

.0364

.0592

Couplesmeanage

.0021**

.0005

.0021**

.0005

.0022**

.0005

Malefemaleage

difference

.0002

.0006

.0002

.0006

.0001

.0006

Male,higheduca

tionaldegree

.0147*

.0067

.0152*

.0066

.0150*

.0066

Female,highedu

cationaldegree

.0161*

.0075

.0157*

.0075

.0170*

.0075

Householdincom

e,1stquintile

.0118

.0083

.0113

.0082

.0123

.0083

Householdincom

e,2ndquintile

.0109

.0082

.0104

.0081

.0102

.0081

Householdincom

e,4thquintile

.0099

.0082

.0099

.0081

.0093

.0082

Householdincom

e,5thquintile

.0080

.0084

.0068

.0084

.0071

.0084



14/24

411

Maleretiredfrom

laborforceb

.0149

.0116

.0156

.0115

.0139

.0116

Femaleretiredfromlaborforceb

.0226**

.0074

.0234**

.0073

.0244**

.0074

Numberofchildr

en

.0106**

.0020

.0105**

.0020

.0108**

.0020

Malecaresforgr

andchildren

.0145

.0084

.0147

.0084

.0148

.0084

Femalecaresfor

grandchildren

.0178

.0081

.0174

.0081

.0177*

.0081


.0008

.0056

.0007

.0055

.0004

.0055

Femalelimitedbyhealthproblems

.0152**

.0054

.0147**

.0054

.0142**

.0054

Onlymalerespon

seavailable

.0422**

.0114

.0413**

.0114

.0409**

.0114

Onlyfemaleresp

onseavailable

.0310**

.0110

.0305**

.0109

.0298**

.0110

Variancecompon

ents

Intercept

.0030**

.0017**

.0017**

.0002**

Maleincomefemaleincome

.0002

.0002

Maleinlaborforce

.0001

.0001

Femaleinlaborf

orce

.0001

.0002

Unmarriedcouple

.0010

.0008

Level1

.0279

.0259

.0257

.0257

Note:GEM=

Un

itedNationsgenderempowermentmeasure.

a.Referencecategory:maleincome=

femalein

come.

b.Referencecate

gory:males(females,respectiv

ely)whoareneitheremployed

norretired.

significantat10%.

*significantat5%.

**signific

antat1%.

Source:SHARE2004(Release1),authorscalc

ulations.



15/24


couples (i.e., those with a higher mean age) exhibit the expected more tra-

ditional pattern of housework, whereas the age difference between the part-

ners has no significant effect. Similarly, the coefficients of the dummyvariables for different levels of household income turn out to be statistically

insignificant. However, there is some indication for a nonlinear relationship

between mens participation in household tasks and household income: The

negative coefficients for the lowest and highest income quintiles suggest

that the contribution of the male partner might be lowest at the upper and

lower bounds of the income distribution.

If the woman has retired, her husbands share of household labor

increases. At first glance, this might seem to be a surprising result, contra-dicting findings of previous studies (e.g., Szinovacz, 2000). In our model,

however, the reference category consists of women who are neither gainfully

employed nor retired. Because these are mostly housewives, retirement in our

model is an indicator of womens previous labor force participation, which

is likely to facilitate a somewhat more equal division of housework between

the partners even after retirement (assuming continuity in household roles;

e.g., Dorfman, 1992).6 Male retirement tends to be negatively correlated

with the dependent variable, but the respective coefficient is not statisticallysignificant.

Family obligations have an effect on older couples division of house-

hold labor in the senses that an increase in the number of children is asso-

ciated with a decrease in males participation in household chores and that

men caring for grandchildren also take larger responsibilities within their

own households. Limitations by health problems are not significant if they

affect men, but they do result in a stronger engagement of the husband in

household duties if the female partners health is limited. As a final couple-

level control variable, we use information about whether only the male or

only the female partner answered the question about the division of house-

work. Consistent with previous studies (e.g., Kamo, 2000), mens involve-

ment in household chores is reported to be stronger if the informant is a

man himself, whereas it appears to be significantly weaker if only the

wifes response is available (see below for further discussion).

Allowing the relative resources, time availability, and gender ideology

indicators to vary across countries in Model 2 does not change the coeffi-

cients derived from the previous model. The variance components for theslopes of the respective variables are not statistically significant, which

means that their effects do not differ by country. Model 3 finally includes

the GEMs effect on the intercept and on the slopes of the malefemale



16/24


income gap, the partners employment status, and union type. The coeffi-

cient for the effect of the GEM on the intercept is .1168 and is statistically

significant. This means that holding constant microlevel characteristics,mens contribution to housework in more gender-egalitarian countries is

substantially larger than elsewhere. Moreover, including the GEM reduces

the remaining between-country variance of the intercept by almost 90

percent, from .0017 to .0002! However, as already indicated in Model 2,

the coefficients for the main microlevel variables generally do not vary

between countries with higher or lower GEM scores. The only exception is

the marginally significant effect of the GEM on the slope of the male

income < female income dummy, suggesting that men in countries withhigher values of GEM contribute somewhat more housework if they earn

less than their female partner, whereas this is not the case in countries with

lower values of GEM.

Following a reviewers recommendation, we also estimated Model 3

separately for men and women (see appendix). As expected from our own

previous findings, the predicted average division of household labor is

larger in the male model (.2317) than in the female model (.2031). In

particular, the positive association between mens contribution to house-hold chores and cohabitation or health limitations of the female partner

appears to be stronger if the interviewee is male. Moreover, the variance

of country-level intercepts is larger in the male model (.0018 vs. .0005),

pointing to a greater cross-national heterogeneity in mens than in

womens responses to the housework question in the SHARE. In contrast

to the initial (couple-level) Model 3 and the male model, the positive

effect of the GEM on the cohabitation slope is marginally significant if the

respondent is female. This finding, however, cannot be considered as suf-

ficiently robust to argue that gender ideology would be more effective in

attaining a more egalitarian division of housework in more gender-equal

countries.

Discussion

Using microdata from the SHARE, this study is the first to investigate

the division of household labor among older couples in a cross-nationalperspective. Across continental Europe, we find considerable variation in

the overall distribution of household labor. One may roughly distinguish

between more egalitarian countries in northern Europe, such as Sweden and



17/24


particularly Denmark, on one hand, and more traditional countries in the

southern parts of Europe, above all Spain and Greece, on the other hand.

Because we are dealing with cohorts born in 1954 or earlier, it is not sur-prising to find a generally lower level of mens participation in housework

than might have been expected from studies that are representative of the

whole population (e.g., Davis & Greenstein, 2004, p. 1265).

The outcome of the multivariate analysis suggests an asymmetric, that is,

gendered, effect of the partners relative income. If the wife earns less than

her husband, for example, the husbands share in household duties is signifi-

cantly lower than in couples with about equal income, but there is no statis-

tically significant effect of relative income if the reverse case is considered.Mens participation in the labor force decreases males participation in

household chores, whereas the female partners engagement in paid work

increases her husbands share of household labor. In addition to this support

for the time-availability hypothesis, we find evidence that less traditional

gender ideologiesindicated by cohabitation and higher education

contribute to a more gender-equal division of housework. However, our

multilevel analysis reveals no country-specific effects of these couple-level

characteristics. The latter finding is different from Fuwa (2004), who pro-vides evidence that relevant microlevel factors have weaker effects on the

division of household labor for women who live in countries with less pro-

nounced gender equality. The lack of support for the macrolevel discount fac-

tor argument in our study may result from a common baseline level of gender

equality in our sample of nine countries, which might be too high to allow the

identification of effects such as those revealed in Fuwas analysis of 22 more

diverse nations.

Although our results point to a greater cross-national heterogeneity in

mens than in womens responses to the housework question in the SHARE,

a general finding is that about half of the between-country variance in the

division of housework is due to cross-country differences in couples

characteristics. Still, we find a significant effect of macrolevel gender

inequalities on couples division of housework. Even when controlling for

individual characteristics of the household, couples living in countries

with higher scores of GEM are more likely to exhibit an equal sharing of

household labor (see Figure 1). Discussing the mechanisms through which

gender empowerment may work, Batalova and Cohen (2002) suggest thatnorms about the division of labor may . . . be affected by womens visi-

bility in positions of public authority and prestige (p. 753). This points to



18/24


the role of broader cultural mechanisms in shaping cross-national variations

in the division of household laborand although the GEM accounts for a

major share of the between-country variance in the distribution of house-work, our analysis still points to the presence of (statistically) significant,

unobserved macrolevel heterogeneity. Bianchi et al. (2000) conclude that

much of the increase in mens share of housework observed in younger U.S.

cohorts is because of their increased willingness to perform this labor,

which is likely to have resulted from

changed attitudes about what is expected, reasonable, and fair for men to

contribute to the maintenance of their home [. . . as well as from . . .] cul-tural change in ideas about womens work. It is likely more acceptable for

men to cook and clean, indeed, welcomed, for men to show competence at

making a home-cooked meal, for example. (p. 219)

Such intertemporal cultural changes are visible as cross-cultural differences

in our investigation.7

This study has some limitations that call for further research. First and

foremost, the current SHARE data allow only a cross-sectional view. Thatis, we cannot observe actual changes in housework after retirement. Our

rough cross-sectional evidence as well as previous U.S. research suggests

that such changes tend to be small. However, the magnitude of these

changes is likely not only to increase in the future (when new generations

of more highly educated women will enter retirement), but also to vary

across national contexts. Exploiting such intertemporal and intercountry

variations should be a promising field for future research. Second, com-

pared to the ISSP, for example, the sample of countries currently repre-

sented in the SHARE is relatively small. In particular, former Socialist

societies are yet missing. Future studies of the division of housework

among older couples should not only aim at an extension of the spatial and

time dimensions of their analyses, though. They should, third, also try at the

microlevel to account for complementary productive activities of elders

inside and outside their own homes (see Hook, 2004) and at the macrolevel

to include indicators that allow development of a better grasp of the cultural

factors contributing to the persistence of the gendered division of (house-

hold) labor.8 Although some suggestions in this latter regard have alreadybeen put forward (such as national cohabitation rates, used by Batalova &

Cohen, 2002), much more systematic work needs still to be done.



19/24

416

Appendix

DeterminantsofCouplesDivisio

nofHousework:ResultsofHierarchicalLinearModels,WithSeparate

EstimationsforMaleandF

emaleRespondents

Model3:Male

Model3:Female

SE

SE

Intercept

.2317**

.0054

.2031**

.0083

GEM

.1236**

.0165

.1119**

.0251

Maleincomefemaleincomea

.0265*

.0109

.0241**

.0102

GEM

.0215

.0311

.0053

.0288

Maleinlaborfor

ceb

.0457**

.0138

.0501*

.0142

GEM

.0250

.0238

.0231

.0241

Femaleinlaborforceb

.0591**

.0113

.0644**

.0120

GEM

.0282

.0300

.0021

.0317

Unmarriedcoupl

e

.0678**

.0203

.0411

.0237

GEM

.0155

.0690

.0635

.0786

Couplesmeanage

.0027**

.0005

.0019**

.0006

Malefemaleage

difference

.0007

.0007

.0004

.0007

Male,higheduca

tionaldegree

.0138

.0077

.0163*

.0081

Female,highedu

cationaldegree

.0131

.0088

.0192*

.0092

Householdincom

e,1stquintile

.0094

.0098

.0163

.0102

Householdincom

e,2ndquintile

.0065

.0096

.0121

.0100

Householdincom

e,4thquintile

.0015

.0096

.0137

.0100



20/24

417

Householdincom

e,5thquintile

.0100

.0099

.0091

.0104

Maleretiredfrom

laborforceb

.0117

.0137

.0175

.0142

Femaleretiredfromlaborforceb

.0266**

.0085

.0217*

.0091

Numberofchildren

.0091**

.0024

.0129**

.0025

Malecaresforgrandchildren

.0104

.0100

.0145

.0104

Femalecaresfor

grandchildren

.0180

.0096

.0139

.0100


.0057

.0065

.0054

.0068

Femalelimitedb

yhealthproblems

.0179**

.0064

.0094

.0066

Variancecompon

ents

Intercept

.0018**

.0005**

Maleincome

femaleincome

.0005

.0004

Maleinlaborforce

.0002

.0002

Femaleinlabo

rforce

.0004

.0004

Unmarriedcou

ple

.0013

.0024

Level1

.0337

.0369

Note:GEM=

Un

itedNationsgenderempower

mentmeasure.

a.Referencecate

gory:maleincome=femalein

come.

b.Referencecate

gory:males(females,respectively)whoareneitheremployed

norretired.

significantat10%.

*significantat5%.

**signific

antat1%.

Source:SHARE

2004(Release1),authorscalc

ulations.



21/24


Notes

1. For details on survey participation, item nonresponse, and imputations in the Survey ofHealth, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), see de Luca and Peracchi (2005) and

Kalwij and van Soest (2005).

2. In 95 percent of our observations, both partners chose the same or a neighboring answer

category. Values indicating that the male partner does the main share or even all of the house-

work are observed for less than 2 percent of our sample.

3. Missing values are a particular concern in the case of income variables. In our study we

use imputed information about income provided from the data by the SHARE group. See

Brugiavini, Croda, Paccagnella, Rainato, and Weber (2005) for a detailed description of the

applied imputation procedures.

4. The proportion of older French couples with an equal division of household labor (asestimated from the SHARE data) is 16 percent, that is, slightly above the average of the nine

countries included in our full analysis.

5. To ease the interpretation of the size effect of the United Nations gender empowerment

measure, we rescaled the values published by the UN so that the country in our sample with

the lowest score has value zero and the country with the highest score has value one.

6. The coefficients of the variables for participation in the labor force and retirement are

significantly different from each other (both for males and for females). Although this provides

some indication for postretirement changes in the division of household labor, these changes

are obviously too small to affect the basic distribution of work between men and women.

7. A closely related issue concerns cross-national variations in equity points. An unequal(i.e., not 5050) distribution of household labor need not necessarily be perceived as unfair.

However, only since the 1990s has research begun to isolate conditions associated with label-

ing divisions of housework as fair or unfair (Coltrane, 2000). Recent work by Davis (2004) not

only reveals cross-national differences in womens average perceptions of fairness of the divi-

sion of household labor, but also shows that these differences are affected by a countrys polit-

ical and economic history as well as by womens overall empowerment.

8. This is not to say that economic factors contributing to greater gender material equality

would be irrelevant (cf. Breen & Cooke, 2005).

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