Explaining the Gender Wealth Gap

To assess and explain the United States’ gender wealth gap, we use the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study to examine wealth accumulated by a single cohort over 50 years by gender, by marital status, and limited to the respondents who are their family’s best financial reporters. We find large gender wealth gaps between currently married men and women, and between never-married men and women. The never-married accumulate less wealth than the currently married, and there is a marital disruption cost to wealth accumulation. The status-attainment model shows the most power in explaining gender wealth gaps between these groups explaining about one-third to one-half of the gap, followed by the human-capital explanation. In other words, a lifetime of lower earnings for women translates into greatly reduced wealth accumulation. After controlling for the full model, we find that a gender wealth gap remains between married men and women that we speculate may be related to gender differences in investment strategies and selection effects.     

Rethinking the Two-Body Problem: The Segregation of Women Into Geographically Dispersed Occupations

Empirical research on the family cites the tendency for couples to relocate for husbands’ careers as evidence against the gender neutrality of household economic decisions. For these studies, occupational segregation is a concern because occupations are not random by sex and mobility is not random by occupation. I find that the tendency for households to relocate for husbands’ careers is better explained by the segregation of women into geographically dispersed occupations rather than by the direct prioritization of men’s careers. Among never-married workers, women relocate for work less often than men, and the gender effect disappears after occupational segregation is accounted for. Although most two-earner families feature husbands in geographically clustered jobs involving frequent relocation for work, families are no less likely to relocate for work when it belongs to the wife. I conclude that future research in household mobility should treat occupational segregation occurring prior to marriage rather than gender bias within married couples as the primary explanation for the prioritization of husbands’ careers in household mobility decisions.     

Examining Sexual Orientation Disparities in Unmet Medical Needs Among Men and Women

Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (N = 13,810), this study examines disparities in unmet medical needs by sexual orientation identity during young adulthood. We use binary logistic regression and expand Andersen’s health care utilization framework to identify factors that shape disparities in unmet medical needs by sexual orientation. We also investigate whether the well-established gender disparity in health-seeking behaviors among heterosexual persons holds for sexual minorities. The results show that sexual minority women are more likely to report unmet medical needs than heterosexual women, but no differences are found between sexual minority and heterosexual men. Moreover, we find a reversal in the gender disparity between heterosexual and sexual minority populations: heterosexual women are less likely to report unmet medical needs than heterosexual men, whereas sexual minority women are more likely to report unmet medical needs compared to sexual minority men. Finally, this work advances Andersen’s model by articulating the importance of including social psychological factors for reducing disparities in unmet medical needs by sexual orientation for women.     

Postmarital Living Arrangements in Historically Patrilocal Settings: Integrating Household Fission and Migration Perspectives

This study integrates theory and research on household fission (or partition) and migration to better understand living arrangements following marriage, especially in historically patrilocal and primarily agricultural settings. Using panel data from the Chitwan Valley Family Study to analyze the sequential decision-making process that influences men’s living arrangements subsequent to first marriage, we demonstrate the importance of distinguishing among extended family living, temporary migration, and the establishment of an independent household. We find that community economic characteristics, such as access to markets or employment, as well as household wealth affect the initial decision to leave the natal home. Household resources and use of farmland, along with the young men’s own education, media exposure, travel, and marital behavior, influence the decision to make the departure from the natal home permanent. Our findings explain why previous results regarding household fission and those focused on migration have provided such mixed results, and we establish a new framework for thinking about how families and individuals manage living situations.     

Growing Wealth Gaps in Education

Prior research on trends in educational inequality has focused chiefly on changing gaps in educational attainment by family income or parental occupation. In contrast, this contribution provides the first assessment of trends in educational attainment by family wealth and suggests that we should be at least as concerned about growing wealth gaps in education. Despite overall growth in educational attainment and some signs of decreasing wealth gaps in high school attainment and college access, I find a large and rapidly increasing wealth gap in college attainment between cohorts born in the 1970s and 1980s, respectively. This growing wealth gap in higher educational attainment co-occurred with a rise in inequality in children’s wealth backgrounds, although the analyses also suggest that the latter does not fully account for the former. Nevertheless, the results reported here raise concerns about the distribution of educational opportunity among today’s children who grow up in a context of particularly extreme wealth inequality.     

Marital Sorting and Parental Wealth

The extent of marital sorting by socioeconomic background has implications for the intergenerational transmission of inequality, the role of marriage as a mechanism for social mobility, and the extent of cross-group interactions within a society. However, studies of assortative mating have disproportionately focused on spouses’ education, rather than their social origins. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), and exploiting the unique genealogical design of the data set, we study the degree to which spouses sort on the basis of parental wealth. We find that the estimated correlation in parental wealth among married spouses, after controlling for race and age, is about .4. Importantly, we show that controlling for spousal education explains only one-quarter of sorting based on parental wealth. We show that our results are robust to accounting for measurement error in spousal reports of parental wealth and for selection into and out of marriage.     

结婚、生育对工资的影响研究 ——基于性别工资差距角度

随着技术进步和女性人力资本水平的提高,男性和女性的劳动生产率差异逐渐缩小,但性别工资差距在我国是否缩小?全面开放的"二胎政策"又是否加深了女性就业困境?本文使用CGSS 2015数据,从结婚、生育角度出发,运用工具变量法、分位数回归、Oaxaca-blinder分解等方法考察婚育事件对劳动力工资的影响及其作用机制,探讨婚育视角下的性别工资差距问题,提出相应对策建议以促进性别公平。研究首先通过对城镇劳动力的婚姻状态和生育情况与工资性收入进行实证分析,发现在控制了个人特征、人力资本、职业性质和地区等因素后,性别工资差距仍显著存在且婚育事件拉大了该差距。其中结婚使男女劳动力的工资水平均有所提高,但由于原始工资水平的差异和溢价大小的不同,性别工资差距被拉大;生育使男性工资增长,女性工资缩水,这同样加大了性别工资差距。其次基于分位数回归结果进行Oaxaca-blinder平均工资差异分解,结果显示随着收入的增加,性别工资差距在缩小,但婚姻和生育对此差距的解释力度却越来越大且相对稳定。即低收入群体的工资差距较大,但婚育对该差距的解释力度较小,相反高收入群体的性别工资差距较小,但婚育对该差距的贡献却很大。因此,缩小婚姻和生育造成的性别工资差距、消除性别歧视、保障女性职业的可持续发展是亟待解决的问题。     

Gender and Job Satisfaction in Urban China: The Role of Individual,Family, and Job Characteristics

This study examines gender differences in job satisfaction in urban Chinese, whether individual achieved status, family and household characteristics, and job characteristics explain these differences, and whether these factors are associated with men’s and women’s job satisfaction differently using a national representative sample of 1,641 men and 1,375 women from the 2006 Chinese General Social Survey. Urban Chinese women are less satisfied with their jobs than urban Chinese men. This gender difference is largely explained by women’s underrepresentation in the Chinese Communist Party and their inferior jobs. Family and household characteristics have stronger impact on women’s job satisfaction than on men’s, but achieved status and job characteristics have similar associations with job satisfaction for men and women. These findings suggest that persistent gender inequality is detrimental to women’s well-being at the workplace.     

Heterosexual Attitudes Toward Same-Sex Marriage

Negative attitudes of heterosexual people toward same-sex marriage relate to the degree to which they are homophobic. However, it has been understudied whether there exists a gender difference in this association. Our results indicated that homophobia was the best predictor of attitudes toward gay male and lesbian marriage, and this was equally true for both heterosexual men and women. However, the attitudinal difference between gay male and lesbian marriage was related to homophobia in men but not in women. That is, for men only, being less homophobic toward lesbians than toward gay men was associated with favoring lesbian over gay men marriage. Considering these results, the role of gender in attitudes toward same-sex marriage seems to be as an important moderator of homophobia.     

Nonlabor Income and Age at Marriage: Evidence From China’s Heating Policy

We exploit China’s heating policy to investigate how nonlabor income affects marriage. From the mid-1950s, the policy gave substantial subsidies to urban residents north of the Huai River. Applying geographic regression discontinuity, we find that with the policy, urban men in the north married 15 months earlier than men in the south. The difference is substantial given that the average age at first marriage is 24.9 years for urban men in the south. The effect is larger for later birth cohorts, which is consistent with the progressive implementation of the policy. The effect is smaller among women, consistent with women having less power in the household than men. There is no effect among rural residents, who did not benefit from the heating policy.     

Transition to First Marriage in Reform-Era Urban China: The Persistent Effect of Education in a Period of Rapid Social Change

The negative association between education and marriage timing is often explained by an economic independence theory: education provides women with independent economic resources to reject the caregiver role in marriage. However, cross-national evidence shows the importance of cultural and historical continuity in marriage formation. This article examines the relationship between educational attainment and the timing of first marriage in reform-era urban China since the 1980s. Reform-era urban China provides a strong case to examine both theories: it has a strong marriage norm, but it has also experienced a rapid increase in gender inequality in the labor market during the economic reform. Using detailed education and work histories of 3,808 respondents from two waves of the Chinese General Social Survey, this article uses discrete-time hazard regressions to contrast the marriage experience between two cohorts that faced different labor market constraints. The evidence fits better with a path dependence theory. Specifically, the effect of education on marriage timing, for both women and men, is not significantly different between these two cohorts. The results encourage attention to local institutions and local culture in understanding the relationship between conditions in the labor market and marriage formation.     

American Househusbands: New Time Use Evidence of Gender Display, 2003–2016

The traditional gendered division of household labor, where women did the bulk of all domestic labor, is eroding. The literature on housework, however, does not discuss the ways how to test for the non-traditional gender performances. Using the American Time Use Survey (2003–2016), the present study fills in this research gap and re-tests the relationship between relative earnings and the performance of housework. The analysis of women’s time spent on domestic work shows that the traditional gender display explanation still applies to women’s participation in routine tasks such as cooking and cleaning. Thus, breadwinning wives display gender neutralizing behavior and ‘do’ gender. On the other hand, American men show non-normative gender behavior in cooking and cleaning, but not in maintenance, where they still ‘do’ gender. This paper unveils a persistent traditional gender performance of women in housework and a new pattern for men’s involvement in indoor routine housework.     

The influence of nonmarital childbearing on the formation of first marriages

We document a negative association between nonmarital childbearing and the subsequent likelihood of first marriage in the United States, controlling for a variety of potentially confounding influences. Nonmarital childbearing does not appear to be driven by low expectations of future marriage. Rather, it tends to be an unexpected and unwanted event, whose effects on a woman’s subsequent likelihood of first marriage are negative on balance. We find that women who bear a child outside marriage and who receive welfare have a particularly low probability of marrying subsequently, although there is no evidence that AFDC recipients have lower expectations of marriage. In addition, we find no evidence that stigma associated with nonmarital childbearing plays an important role in this process or that the demands of children significantly reduce unmarried mothers’ time for marriage market activities.     

Solitary Time and Mental Health in the Netherlands

Whereas prior research focused on the beneficial effects of time spent with others, this study investigated the association between solitary time and mental health by hypothesizing about the possible detriments as well as benefits. Additionally, we studied whether the association between solitary time and mental health was nonlinear and moderated by gender and life stage. We hypothesized that whereas solitary time limits individuals’ access to social resources and support (decreasing mental health), it also helps individuals to recharge (enhancing mental health). We used the Dutch Time Use Survey from 2006 (N = 1,487). Results of Tobit models indicated that more solitary time in leisure (but not household labor) was associated with a reduction in mental health. For men, we did find a negative association between alone time in household labor and mental health. There was no evidence for a curvilinear relationship between time alone and mental health, nor did life course stage appeared to moderate this association.     

An Agricultural Wealth Index for Multidimensional Wealth Assessments

Social scientists have increasingly used asset‐based wealth scores, like the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) wealth index, to assess economic disparities. However, current indices primarily capture wealth in globalized market economies, thus ignoring other forms of prosperity, such as success in agricultural activities. Using a simple extension to the standard estimation of the DHS wealth index, we describe procedures for estimating an agricultural wealth index (AWI) that complements market‐based wealth indices by capturing household success in agricultural activities. We apply this procedure to household data from 129 DHS surveys from over 40 countries with sufficient land and livestock data to estimate a reliable and consistent AWI. We assess the construct validity of the AWI using benchmarks of growth in both adults and children. This alternative measure of wealth provides new opportunities for understanding the causes and consequences of wealth inequality, and how success along different dimensions of wealth creates different social opportunities and constraints for health and well‐being.     

Unemployment,Nonstandard Employment,and Fertility: Insights From Japan’s “Lost 20 Years”

In this study, we examine relationships of unemployment and nonstandard employment with fertility. We focus on Japan, a country characterized by a prolonged economic downturn, significant increases in both unemployment and nonstandard employment, a strong link between marriage and childbearing, and pronounced gender differences in economic roles and opportunities. Analyses of retrospective employment, marriage, and fertility data for the period 1990–2006 indicate that changing employment circumstances for men are associated with lower levels of marriage, while changes in women’s employment are associated with higher levels of marital fertility. The latter association outweighs the former, and results of counterfactual standardization analyses indicate that Japan’s total fertility rate would have been 10 % to 20 % lower than the observed rate after 1995 if aggregate- and individual-level employment conditions had remained unchanged from the 1980s. We discuss the implications of these results in light of ongoing policy efforts to promote family formation and research on temporal and regional variation in men’s and women’s roles within the family.     

Return to Being Black, Living in the Red: A Race Gap in Wealth That Goes Beyond Social Origins

In the United States, racial disparities in wealth are vast, yet their causes are only partially understood. In Being Black, Living in the Red, Conley (1999) argued that the sociodemographic traits of young blacks and their parents, particularly parental wealth, wholly explain their wealth disadvantage. Using data from the 1980–2009 waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, I show that this conclusion hinges on the specific sample considered and the treatment of debtors in the sample. I further document that prior research has paid insufficient attention to the possibility of variation in the association between wealth and race at different points of the net worth distribution. Among wealth holders, blacks remain significantly disadvantaged in assets compared with otherwise similar whites. Among debtors, however, young whites hold more debt than otherwise similar blacks. The results suggest that, among young adults, debt may reflect increased access to credit, not simply the absence of assets. The asset disadvantage for black net wealth holders also indicates that research and policy attention should not be focused only on young blacks “living in the red.”     

<Emphasis Type="Bold">Women’s Progress for Men’s Gain? Gender-Specific Changes in the Return to Education as Measured by Family Standard of Living, 1990 to 2009–2011</Emphasis>

This study investigates gender-specific changes in the total financial return to education among persons of prime working ages (35–44 years) using U.S. Census data from 1990 and 2000, and the 2009–2011 American Community Survey. We define the total financial return to education as the family standard of living as measured by family income adjusted for family size. Our results indicate that women experienced significant progress in educational attainment and labor market outcomes over this time period. Ironically, married women’s progress in education and personal earnings has led to greater improvement in the family standard of living for married men than for women themselves. Gender-specific changes in assortative mating are mostly responsible for this paradoxical trend. Because the number of highly educated women exceeds the number of highly educated men in the marriage market, the likelihood of educational marrying up has substantially increased for men over time while women’s likelihood has decreased. Sensitivity analyses show that the greater improvement in the family standard of living for men than for women is not limited to prime working-age persons but is also evident in the general population. Consequently, women’s return to education through marriage declined while men’s financial gain through marriage increased considerably.     

Opportunities to Meet: Occupational Education and Marriage Formation in Young Adulthood

Explanations for the positive association between education and marriage in the United States emphasize the economic and cultural attractiveness of having a college degree in the marriage market. However, educational attainment may also shape the opportunities that men and women have to meet other college-educated partners, particularly in contexts with significant educational stratification. We focus on work—and the social ties that it supports—and consider whether the educational composition of occupations is important for marriage formation during young adulthood. Employing discrete-time event-history methods using the NLSY-97, we find that occupational education is positively associated with transitioning to first marriage and with marrying a college-educated partner for women but not for men. Moreover, occupational education is positively associated with marriage over cohabitation as a first union for women. Our findings call attention to an unexplored, indirect link between education and marriage that, we argue, offers insight into why college-educated women in the United States enjoy better marriage prospects.     

Socioeconomic Inequalities in Infant Mortality in Egypt: Analyzing Trends Between 1995 and 2014

This paper analyses the trend of the socioeconomic inequalities in infant mortality rates in Egypt over the period 1995–2014, using repeated cross-sectional data from the National Demographic and Health Survey. A multivariate logistic regression and concentration indices are used to examine the demographic and socioeconomic correlates of infant mortality, and how the degree of socioeconomic disparities in child mortality rates has evolved over time. We find a significant drop in infant mortality rates from 63 deaths per 1000 live births in 1995 to 22 deaths per 1000 live births in 2014. However, analyzing trends over the study period reveals no corresponding progress in narrowing the socioeconomic disparities in childhood mortality. Infant mortality rates remain higher in rural areas and among low-income families than the national average. Results show an inverse association between infant mortality rates and living standard measures, with the poor bearing the largest burden of early child mortality. Though the estimated concentration indices show a decline in the degree of socioeconomic inequality in child mortality rates over time, infant mortality rate among the poor remains twice the rate of the richest wealth quintile. Nonetheless, this decline in the degree of socioeconomic inequality in child mortality is not supported by the results of the multivariate logistic regression model. Results of the logistic model show higher odds of infant mortality among rural households, children who are twins, households with risky birth intervals. We find no statistically significant association between infant mortality and child’s sex, access to safe water, mothers’ work, and mothers’ nutritional status. Infant mortality is negatively associated with household wealth and regular health care during pregnancy. Concerted effort and targeting intervention measures are still needed to reduce the degree of socioeconomic and regional inequalities in child health, including infant mortality, in Egypt.