Earner Position and Job and Life Satisfaction: Do Contributions to the Household Income have the Same Effect by Gender and Occupations?

Using data from the 2013 module on well-being of EU-SILC, we analyze the effects of individual household earning positions in dual-earner and sole-earner couples on job and life satisfaction by gender at different occupational levels: low-skill jobs versus the rest. Our main findings indicate that the effects of such positions differ by gender for job satisfaction, but not for life satisfaction.For women there is no relation to the type of occupation, but men in elementary occupations are more satisfied with their job if they are the main earner in the household. Meanwhile women are more satisfied with their job if they make a substantial contribution to the total earnings of the household. In fact, considering the effects of job and socio-economic characteristics such as working hours and time spent on domestic tasks, women prefer to promote their career instead of keeping the traditional role with a focus on housework. However, factors such as the gender wage gap and cultural norms that tend to allocate the best positions to men complicate achieving an equivalent earnings distribution for the two genders.By contrast, men prefer maintaining their traditional role focused on paid work, with them being the unique earner. Finally, we find gender differences in the effects of several variables on job satisfaction, on the one hand, and life satisfaction, on the other hand, which are surprisingin light of the established view that the former is a great predictor of the latter.