The Wall Street Journal, July 20, 2009, Monday

The Wall Street Journal

July 20, 2009, Monday

The Wall Street Journal

Men Like Earning More Than Wives

By ROBERT SABAT
In my family, I’m the one who brings home the ratatouille as a Wall Street Journal editor. Meanwhile, my wife, a classical singer, looks after our two children, 14 and 12 years old, volunteers at their schools and brings in some extra money by giving voice lessons and writing.

According to a new study, this means I likely have significantly higher career satisfaction than if my wife earned the same or more than me. Pamela Tolbert, the co-author of “The Impact of Relative Earnings Among Dual-Earner Couples on Career Satisfaction and Family Satisfaction” and a professor at Cornell University’s ILR School, looked at 485 middle-class married couples in New York State between 1999 and 2002. They were all dual-earner couples—both husband and wife held full-time jobs.

Ms. Tolbert classified as “equal-earner” couples those in which both spouses contributed between 40% and 60% of total family income. Those in which the men contributed more than 60% of total family income she classified as “traditional” couples. Ms. Tolbert examined how satisfied men and women in these arrangements were with both their careers and their family lives.

It turns out, not too surprisingly, that men really do like making more than their wives. The study found that men who earn a lot more than their wives report significantly higher career satisfaction than men who earn about the same as their spouses, according to Ms. Tolbert and her co-author, Ronit Waismel-Manor of Israel’s Netanya Academic College. “Husbands feel concerned when wives make more than them,” says Ms. Tolbert. “We still have these kinds of models in our head.”

But, interestingly, although pay levels affect husbands’ career satisfaction, money doesn’t seem to matter much when it comes to the home front. Whether men earn less, the same or more than their wives has little effect on their reported level of family satisfaction, which tends to be high, the researchers found. The reasons for that are open to speculation, they added.

Meanwhile, women who earn the same as their husbands report significantly higher levels of career satisfaction than do women in traditional couples, but significantly lower family satisfaction.

The take-home message of her findings, says Ms. Tolbert, is that too many people still cling to outdated gender roles.

Juggle readers, how have you and your partners’ career and family satisfaction fared in relation to your family’s pay structure?