Abstract

Many couples face a trade-off between advancing one spouse’s career or the other’s. We study this trade-off using administrative data from Germany and Sweden. Using an event study approach, we find that when couples move across commuting zones, men’s earnings increase more than women’s. To distinguish between men’s greater potential earnings and a gender norm that prioritizes men’s careers, we examine how the patterns differ when the woman has higher potential earnings than her husband. We then estimate a model of household decision-making in which households can (and do) place more weight on income earned by the man.