Labor‐Market Specialization within Same‐Sex and Difference‐Sex Couples

• Author: Christopher Jepsen,Lisa K. Jepsen
• Date: 01 January 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/irel.12078
• Published date: 01 January 2015

Labor-Market Specialization within Same-Sex

and Difference-Sex Couples

*

CHRISTOPHER JEPSEN and LISA K. JEPSEN

We use data from the 2000 decennial U.S. Census to compare differences in earn-

ings, hours worked, and labor-force participation between members of different

household types, including same-sex couples, different-sex couples, and room-

mates. Both same-sex and different-sex couples exhibit some degree of household

specialization, whereas roommates show little or no degree of specialization. Of

all household types, married couples exhibit by far the highest degree of special-

ization with respect to labor-market outcomes. With respect to differences in earn-

ings and hours, gay male couples are more similar to married couples than

lesbian or unmarried heterosexual couples are to married couples.

Introduction

A variety of research considers how couples allocate their time to market

and home production. Most research on household specialization is based on

Becker’s theories, advanced in his book A Treatise on the Family (1991), that

members of households make interdependent economic decisions. Becker’s

specialization theories are built on the idea that women have a comparative

advantage in bearing and raising children. If men and women share a house-

hold, the woman is therefore more likely to specialize in home production,

and her husband is more likely to specialize in market production. Men who

anticipate marrying women have incentives to invest more in market-based

human capital, so the theories of gender-specific household specialization pre-

dict that men may earn more than women and that married men may earn

more than single men.

Recently researchers have applied Becker’s theories to other household

types. The availability of decennial U.S. Census data for cohabiting same-sex

couples for the 1990 and 2000 censuses allows economists to study a variety

of topics related to sexual orientation, including household specialization. The

data also allow economists to study cohabiting but unmarried different-sex

*The authors’affiliations are, respectively, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland. Email:

christopher.jepsen@ucd.ie; and University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, Iowa. Email: lisa.jepsen@uni.edu.

INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, Vol. 54, No. 1 (January 2015). ©2014 Regents of the University of California

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couples. Becker’s theories predict a greater degree of household specialization

for married couples compared to all other types of couples. Married house-

holds contain both a man and a woman, and the woman has the legal protec-

tions of marriage should the union dissolve. Different-sex but unmarried

couples could also benefit from the sexual division of labor, but a woman in

such a union might be more reluctant to specialize in home production than a

married woman because she lacks the legal protections of marriage. Same-sex

couples are the least likely to exhibit household specialization because they

lack an obvious means of sexual division of labor.

We extend the specialization work that focuses on married couples to

same-sex couples. Our analysis also extends the small literature on same-sex

couples by considering differences in earnings, hours worked, and labor-

force participation as signals of household specialization. The overall

research goal is to understand the extent to which all household types spe-

cialize, as well as how specialization differs by couple type. Because the

vast majority of the specialization literature focuses on married couples, we

compare other household types directly to married couples to address the

research goal.

Because roommates often meet in school or through work, they likely share

many of the traits for which Becker (1991) predicts positive assortative mat-

ing, or the pairings of people with similar traits. We expect couples to make a

household-level decision about how to allocate their time to the labor market

based, in part, on potential earnings differences, but we do not expect room-

mates to make a joint decision about any aspects of working. Hence, room-

mates provide an appropriate comparison group.

We find evidence consistent with specialization for all couple types but

not for roommates. Members of couples have larger earnings and hours

worked differences than roommates, and married couples have the largest

differences. If larger earnings and work hours differences suggest specializa-

tion, then our results suggest that both same-sex and different-sex couples

exhibit some degree of household specialization. Gay male couples are more

similar to married couples than lesbian couples are to married couples with

respect to differences in earnings and hours worked, and gay male couples

are more similar to married couples than unmarried different-sex couples are

to married couples with respect to differences in earnings. With respect to

labor-force participation, unmarried heterosexual couples are more like mar-

ried couples than gay male or lesbian couples are to married couples. For all

outcomes, married couples are noticeably different from all other household

types.

110 / CHRISTOPHER JEPSEN AND LISA K. JEPSEN