The Late Divide. Gender and the Division of Labor in Older Couples
Final Report Abstract
This project proposed a comprehensive longitudinal investigation of the division of labor in older couples. It addressed a major gap of knowledge, as previous research has focused almost exclusively on how younger couples negotiate their division of market and domestic work throughout earlier periods of married life. Filling these gaps of theoretical and empirical knowledge about couples’ division of labor is important, given that today’s retirees can expect to spend decades in good health and research has portrayed this life stage as a prolific period in which older adults perform various productive activities. Four central findings emerged from this project. First, concerning the division of housework over the transition to retirement, we showed that spouses who retired first performed more housework, whereas their partners who continued working performed less. This occurred irrespective of the retirement sequence. Husbands who retired first doubled up on their share of housework, but never performed more than 40% of a couple’s total hours. None of the observed shifts were permanent. After both spouses had retired, couples reverted to their preretirement division of housework. Second, concerning health and housework, we showed that wives’ and husbands’ housework time declined with health status, but these effects were large only for serious health problems. We found evidence for within-couple compensation of spouses’ health declines, a mechanism that was limited to indispensable tasks of routine housework. The probability of getting paid help from outside the household increased with declining health, and this increase was more strongly tied to wives’ health declines than to husbands’ health declines. Third, concerning the development of housework performance over the life course, we found two types of gender convergence in housework time. First, the gender gap converged across the life course, narrowing by more than 50 percent from age 35 until age 70. Lifecourse profiles of housework time were strongly gendered, as women’s housework time peaked in younger adulthood and declined thereafter, whereas men’s housework time remained stably low for decades and increased only in older age. Second, the gender gap converged across cohorts, narrowing by 40 percent from cohorts 1940 until 1960. Cohort profiles of housework time showed strong declines in women and moderate increases in men. Both cohort trends were linear and extended to the most recently born, supporting the notion of continued convergence in housework time. Fourth, concerning the development of satisfaction with housework over time, we found that satisfaction with housework declined in women and increased in men. These diverging trends contrast with concurrent shifts in time spent on housework. This means that women became less satisfied despite doing less housework, whereas men became more satisfied despite doing more housework. Holzer, Boris: “Das bisschen Haushalt.“ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 01.07.2018, Page 66.
Publications
- 2018. “Gender convergence in housework time: A life course and cohort perspective.” Sociological Science, Volume 5, Pages 281–303
Leopold, Thomas, Skopek, Jan, & Schulz, Florian
(See online at https://doi.org/10.15195/v5.a13) - 2018. “Retirement and changes in housework: A panel study of dual earner couples.” The Journals of Gerontology, Series B: Social Sciences, Volume 73, Issue 4, Pages 733–743
Leopold, Thomas, & Skopek, Jan
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1093/geronb/gbw121) - “Diverging trends in satisfaction with housework: Declines in women, increases in men.” Journal of Marriage and Family
Leopold, Thomas
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12520) - “Health and housework in later life: A longitudinal study of retired couples.” The Journals of Gerontology, Series B: Social Sciences
Leopold, Thomas, & Schulz, Florian
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1093/geronb/gby015)
