IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iae/iaewps/wp2004n19.html

Female Breadwinner Families: Their Existence, Persistence and Sources

Author

Listed:
  • Robert Drago

    (Department of Labor Studies and Industrial Relations, Pennsylvania State University)

  • David Black

    (Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne)

  • Mark Wooden

    (Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne)

Abstract

We develop a typology for understanding couple households where the female is the major earner – what we term female breadwinner households – and test it using data from the first two waves of the HILDA Survey. We distinguish temporary from persistent female breadwinner households and hypothesise, and confirm, that these two groups diverge on demographic, socio-economic status (SES), labour market and family commitment characteristics. Among the persistent group we further distinguish those couples where the dominance of a female earner is related to economic factors and those where it appears associated with a purposeful gender equity strategy. We again hypothesise and confirm that these household types significantly diverge, finding that men in the economic group exhibit low SES, poor labour market position, and low levels of commitment to family, while both the women and men in the equity type often achieve positive outcomes regarding gender equity and economic and family success.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert Drago & David Black & Mark Wooden, 2004. "Female Breadwinner Families: Their Existence, Persistence and Sources," Melbourne Institute Working Paper Series wp2004n19, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne.
    • Handle: RePEc:iae:iaewps:wp2004n19
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://melbourneinstitute.unimelb.edu.au/downloads/working_paper_series/wp2004n19.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bruce Headey & Mark Wooden & Gary Marks, 2004. "The Structure and Distribution of Household Wealth in Australia," Melbourne Institute Working Paper Series wp2004n12, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne.
    2. Mark Wooden & Simon Freidin & Nicole Watson, 2002. "The Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA)Survey: Wave 1," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 35(3), pages 339-348, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hans Bloemen & Elena Stancanelli, 2007. "Modelling the employment and wage outcomes of spouses: is she outearning him?," Post-Print hal-01053593, HAL.
    2. Alessandro Cigno, 2007. "A Theoretical Analysis of the Effects of Legislation on Marriage, Fertility, Domestic Division of Labour, and the Education of Children," CESifo Working Paper Series 2143, CESifo.
    3. Brehmer, Wolfram & Klenner, Christina & Klammer, Ute, 2010. "Wenn Frauen das Geld verdienen - eine empirische Annäherung an das Phänomen der Familienernährerin," WSI Working Papers 170, The Institute of Economic and Social Research (WSI), Hans Böckler Foundation.
    4. Alessandro Cigno, 2012. "Marriage as a commitment device," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 10(2), pages 193-213, June.
    5. repec:spo:wpecon:info:hdl:2441/9665 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Seamus McGuinness & John Freebairn, 2007. "Who Are the Low Waged?," Melbourne Institute Working Paper Series wp2007n08, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne.
    7. Alessandro Cigno, 2011. "The Economics of Marriage," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 12(s1), pages 28-41, May.
    8. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/10023 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Elena Stancanelli, 2007. "Marriage and Work: an analysis for French couples in the last decade," Documents de Travail de l'OFCE 2007-10, Observatoire Francais des Conjonctures Economiques (OFCE).
    10. repec:spo:wpecon:info:hdl:2441/10023 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/9665 is not listed on IDEAS

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bruce Headey & Mark Wooden, 2004. "The Effects of Wealth and Income on Subjective Well‐Being and Ill‐Being," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 80(s1), pages 24-33, September.
    2. Greg Kaplan & Giovanni L. Violante & Justin Weidner, 2014. "The Wealthy Hand-to-Mouth," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 45(1 (Spring), pages 77-153.
    3. Roger Wilkins, 2004. "The Extent and Consequences of Underemployment in Australia," Melbourne Institute Working Paper Series wp2004n16, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne.
    4. Daniel S. Hamermesh & Jungmin Lee, 2007. "Stressed Out on Four Continents: Time Crunch or Yuppie Kvetch?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 89(2), pages 374-383, May.
    5. Bruce Headey, 2008. "Poverty Is Low Consumption and Low Wealth, Not Just Low Income," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 89(1), pages 23-39, October.
    6. Ingebjørg Kristoffersen, 2010. "The Metrics of Subjective Wellbeing: Cardinality, Neutrality and Additivity," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 86(272), pages 98-123, March.
    7. Umut Oguzoglu, 2010. "Dynamics of work limitation and work in Australia," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(6), pages 656-669, June.
    8. Mendolia, Silvia & Siminski, Peter, 2017. "Is education the mechanism through which family background affects economic outcomes? A generalised approach to mediation analysis," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 1-12.
    9. Trevor Breusch & Edith Gray, 2004. "New Estimates of Mothers’ Forgone Earnings Using HILDA Data," Australian Journal of Labour Economics (AJLE), Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre (BCEC), Curtin Business School, vol. 7(2), pages 125-150, June.
    10. Butterworth, Peter & Gill, Sarah C. & Rodgers, Bryan & Anstey, Kaarin J. & Villamil, Elena & Melzer, David, 2006. "Retirement and mental health: Analysis of the Australian national survey of mental health and well-being," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 62(5), pages 1179-1191, March.
    11. Deborah A. Cobb-Clark & Andrew Leigh, 2009. "Long-Term Unemployment in the ACT," CEPR Discussion Papers 603, Centre for Economic Policy Research, Research School of Economics, Australian National University.
    12. Lavinia Poruschi & John Gardner, 2022. "Energy Disadvantage and Housing: Considerations Towards Establishing a Long Run Integrated Analysis Framework," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 55(4), pages 530-540, December.
    13. George Kudrna & Alan D. Woodland, 2013. "Macroeconomic and Welfare Effects of the 2010 Changes to Mandatory Superannuation," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 89(287), pages 445-468, December.
    14. Robert Breunig & Deborah A. Cobb-Clark & Xiaodong Gong & Daniella Venn, 2005. "Disagreement in Partners’ Reports of Financial Difficulty," ANU Working Papers in Economics and Econometrics 2005-453, Australian National University, College of Business and Economics, School of Economics.
    15. Cobb-Clark, Deborah A. & Tan, Michelle, 2011. "Noncognitive skills, occupational attainment, and relative wages," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 1-13, January.
    16. Daghagh Yazd, Sahar & Wheeler, Sarah Ann & Zuo, Alec, 2020. "Understanding the impacts of water scarcity and socio-economic demographics on farmer mental health in the Murray-Darling Basin," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).
    17. Currie, Phillippa & Smith, Trenton G. & Stillman, Steven, 2014. "Is Job Insecurity Making Australians Fat? Evidence from Panel Data on Perceived Risk of Job Loss," 2014 Annual Meeting, July 27-29, 2014, Minneapolis, Minnesota 170720, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    18. Cai, Lixin, 2010. "The relationship between health and labour force participation: Evidence from a panel data simultaneous equation model," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 77-90, January.
    19. Syed Afroz Keramat & Khorshed Alam & Jeff Gow & Stuart J H Biddle, 2020. "Gender differences in the longitudinal association between obesity, and disability with workplace absenteeism in the Australian working population," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(5), pages 1-14, May.
    20. Jetter, Michael & Magnusson, Leandro M. & Roth, Sebastian, 2020. "Becoming sensitive: Males’ risk and time preferences after the 2008 financial crisis," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 128(C).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J12 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iae:iaewps:wp2004n19. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sheri Carnegie (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/mimelau.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.