The evolution of the earnings gap within couples over time – a life-course perspective

Research on earnings inequalities in heterosexual couples has shown that women tend to earn substantially less than their male partners (e.g.Bianci et al. 1999; Estevez-Abe 2008; Dotti-Sani 2015) and also that these inequalities have been quite consistent over time and resistant to institutional change (Dieckhoff et al. 2020). These inequalities are problematic as they impact women’s future labour market outcomes. We know from existing work that women who earn less than their partner are more likely to drop out of the labour market (Shafer 2011); switch from full-time to part-time (Dieckhoff et al. 2016) and less like to advance their careers (Bröckel et al. 2015). Earnings inequalities in couples are hence not only the result of inequalities in the labour market, they can also further enhance them. It is thus important to understand these inequalities and how these evolve over the life-course. In this effort, we investigate using the German Socio-economic Panel (SOEP) 1992-2018 how earnings inequalities evolve with duration of couple’s cohabiting relationships based on German panel data. We also examine whether different patterns can be observed for different cohorts.

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