Women who earn more than their male partners are still more likely to experience a relationship breakup, according to a study published in the journal Women’s Health. marriage and family journal. However, this study casts doubt on one of the most common explanations for this pattern, finding little evidence that traditional gender norms are to blame.
Over recent decades, women have increasingly outperformed men in educational attainment and earned more than their partners in many relationships. Previous studies have repeatedly shown that these couples are more likely to separate or divorce, and researchers suggest that traditional expectations of the man as the primary breadwinner may be putting extra strain on these relationships. Other explanations focus on women’s economic independence, differences in earning potential, or the likelihood that people seek partners from similar socio-economic backgrounds.
The researchers wanted to determine which factors, if any, best explain the higher rates of relationship dissolution observed when women are more economically advantaged.
A research team led by University of Pennsylvania researcher Pilar Gonalons Pons analyzed harmonized panel data collected from 544,911 opposite-sex couples in 29 high-income countries between 2004 and 2020. The study included 437,102 married couples and 107,809 cohabiting couples drawn from several large international household surveys.
The researchers used a statistical model to examine whether women who earn more than their partners predict separation, while testing several competing explanations, including gender norms, economic independence, labor market conditions, and work-family conflict.
Researchers found that couples where the woman earned more than her partner were 36% more likely to break up. However, many of the explanations that have dominated previous research have found little support. Stronger associations were not found in countries with more traditional gender views. This suggests that cultural beliefs about male breadwinners do not fully explain why these relationships end more often. Similarly, women’s greater economic independence, men’s relative economic advantage, and differences in their opportunities to find similar partners also failed to explain this pattern.
On the contrary, there was the strongest evidence of work-family conflict. The association between a woman’s higher income and relationship dissolution was significantly stronger for couples who were raising children. Female breadwinner couples with children were 49% more likely to break up than male breadwinner couples, while female breadwinner couples without children were 23% more likely to break up than male breadwinner couples.
This finding suggests that the higher a woman’s income, the more strain she may have on her relationships as she balances work and family responsibilities. This is probably due to the uneven distribution of household responsibilities. The study authors also found partial evidence that this association may be tied to some extent with anticipation of separation and financial hardship as confounding factors.
“Work-family conflict may be particularly intense if women do not stop paid work after childbirth and their male partners do not contribute fully to household labor,” the authors explained.
The researchers cautioned that their findings should not be interpreted as indicating that women’s higher incomes lead to more relationship breakdowns. For example, the researchers note that their dataset lacks information on relationship duration, an important variable for how risk of separation changes over the course of a relationship. Additionally, large international surveys cannot capture all aspects of relationships, such as quality, communication, and compatibility. The study also focused only on high-income countries and opposite-sex couples, meaning the results may not apply to other regions.
The study, “Women’s Socioeconomic Advantage Over Their Partners and Relationship Dissolution: A Study of 29 Countries,” was authored by Pilar Gonalons-Pons and Alison Danacchik.
