Figure - uploaded by Helen Kowalewska
Content may be subject to copyright.
Figure S2. Predicted logarithm of individual labour income from linear regression models with 95% confidence intervals. Notes. 'MBW' = man is the only wage-earner; 'FBW' = woman is the only wage-earner. Regression model includes controls for: age of woman and man, partner's level of education, number of children, and whether a child aged 0-5. Estimates not shown. Sources. Own calculations using the Luxembourg Income Study Database, Wave 10 (~2016) or 9 (~2013).
Source publication
In analysing heterosexual couples’ work–family arrangements over time and space, the comparative social policy literature has settled on the framework of the ‘male-breadwinner’ versus the ‘dual-earner’ family. Yet, in assuming men in couple-families are (full-time) employed, this framework overlooks another work–family arrangement, which is the ‘fe...
Similar publications
Growth-dependent welfare states contribute to climate emergency. The ecological economics, degrowth, and sustainable welfare literatures demonstrate that to re-embed Western production and consumption patterns in environmental limits, an encompassing social-ecological transformation would need to be initiated very soon. This article focuses on the...
This study analyses welfare chauvinist attitudes in the generous welfare states of Sweden, Norway and Finland. We find that strict forms of exclusionary welfare chauvinism are near non-existent. However, Finland, Norway and Sweden are in the top tier in Europe when it comes to beliefs that immigrants need to obtain citizenship before being given eq...
The paper maps out South Korea’s key social policy responses to the Covid-19 pandemic based on an analysis of legislation and budget proposals adopted between January 2020 and September 2020. Both data sources indicate that the South Korean government clearly utilized social policy tools to mitigate the damage incurred by the pandemic. First, eight...
Recent findings from the welfare state and public opinion literature have shown that support for social policy is massive. Over the last decades we have witnessed a growing support coalition and an increase in conflict over the specific design of the welfare state. In this context of high but specific support for social policy, parties engage in is...
To explain single-mother poverty, existing research has either emphasized individualistic, or contextual explanations. Building on the prevalences and penalties framework (Brady et al. 2017), we advance the literature on single-mother poverty in three aspects: First, we extend the framework to incorporate heterogeneity among single mothers across c...
Citations
... Digital financial inclusion is inclusive. With the advantage of financial science and technology, digital inclusive finance, on the basis of promoting the balanced allocation of urban and rural financial resources, includes more poor and weak groups into the target of accurate imaging, not only effectively improves the financial accessibility of poor and remote areas, but also eases the financial constraints of the family through the three mechanisms of digital payment to facilitate consumption, digital credit to smooth the consumption, and digital insurance to reduce the motivation of preventive savings [5][6][7]. At the same time, digital financial inclusion has a poverty reduction and incomegenerating effect. ...
The global landscape of digital financial inclusion aims to extend broader, more accessible, and cost-efficient financial services via digital channels to those marginalized by conventional financial systems. Particularly in developing countries, household economic and financial fragility remains a pressing concern. Economic vulnerability denotes the incapacity of households to withstand unforeseen difficulties in the wake of economic downturns, precipitating a significant deterioration in living standards. This research investigates the role of digital financial inclusion in diminishing household economic vulnerability and enhancing the efficacy of financial services to address this challenge. Employing a fuzzy rough set algorithm to examine the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) dataset, our analysis identifies critical factors of household economic vulnerability and their interaction with digital financial inclusion services. Findings demonstrate that digital financial services markedly reduce household economic vulnerability, evidenced by a 12% improvement in household solvency and a 20% uplift in financial resilience. Rural and lower-income families derive the most significant benefits from digital financial inclusion. Furthermore, the study underscores the importance of advancing financial literacy and refining financial product design as pivotal strategies in mitigating household economic vulnerability. This research offers valuable insights for policymakers and financial service providers on leveraging digital technology to bolster household economic stability.
... Prior research on maternal breadwinning has typically focused on one of two areas. The first describes the economic and sociodemographic characteristics of these households (Kowalewska & Vitali, 2020;Winslow-Bowe, 2009). While insightful, this cross-sectional approach tells us little about when and how she became the primary wage earner, or what the economic consequences were for the household at that point in time. ...
... Yet the economic consequences of these changes within partnered households are not well known. Cross-sectional research across 20 countries has shown among partnered households that those in female-breadwinning arrangements have significantly lower incomes than male-breadwinning and dualearning households (Kowalewska & Vitali, 2020). But it remains unclear if the mother's status as primary earner is the reason for cross-household differences in economic wellbeing or if mothers' selection into that role is. ...
The economic circumstances in which children grow up have garnered much scholarly attention due to their close associations with well-being over the life course. While it has been well-documented that children are increasingly growing up in households where their primary financial support comes from their mother, regardless of whether she is partnered or single, the consequences for household economic well-being are unclear. We use the 2014 Survey of Income and Program Participation to quantify how a mother’s transition into primary earner status affects the economic well-being of her household and if the effects differ based on her relationship status. On average, household income declines and more households are unable to meet their economic needs once the mother becomes the primary earner. However, these declines in income are concentrated among partnered-mother households and mothers who transition from partnered to single during the year. At the same time, although many single mothers see an increase in household income, the majority of these households are still unable to meet their economic needs. These findings suggest that the shift to a welfare system that requires employment coupled with structural changes in the labor market have created financial hardship for most families.
... Despite these limitations, this study sheds light on how the parental division of paid labour is associated with depressive symptoms in European families. It provides evidence on mental health in male breadwinner and dual-earner couples, which used to be the most prevalent family types; and on mental health in female breadwinner and jobless couples, which have received less attention, but are becoming increasingly common in Europe (Härkönen, 2011;Kowalewska and Vitali, 2020). Moreover, while some prior studies show that combining work with childrearing reduces wellbeing among parents with limited access to childcare services (Schober and Schmitt, 2017), other studies find no evidence on such link (Hamplová, 2019). ...
This study examines the association between the parental division of paid labour and depressive symptoms in a comparative perspective. It investigates how this relationship varies across couples in countries with different social policies using data from European Social Survey, and multilevel models with cross-level interactions between the parental division of paid labour and
macro-level indicators of social policies.
The results indicate that dual-earner couples report fewer depressive symptoms than parents in other types of families. This relative advantage of dual-earner couples varies across policy contexts. The benefits of a dual-earner model over a male breadwinner model are larger in countries where childcare services are easily available and do not disappear in countries with generous financial support from the state. Additional analyses reveal how these relationships differ across gender.
... with full-time employed women, men are likely to do relatively more housework and childcare than in couples with lower female labour-market attachment (Sanchez and Thomson, 1997). Also, the growing support of gender equality has changed families and the traditional role of the main providera partner earning half or more of the couple's total earningsis no longer associated only with men (Drago et al., 2005;Kowalewska and Vitali, 2020). Lastly, the highly protected labour arrangements among public sector employees (OECD, 2002) or their preference for work-family balance (Buelens and Van Den Broeck, 2007), could cause a greater substitution of paid for unpaid work in response to increased family obligations than among the private sector professionals, who face a higher risk of losing a job, and not being promoted in case of lower performance relative to their co-workers (Leuze and Rusconi, 2009). ...
The absence of institutionalised childcare and education during the lockdowns, caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, put parents who worked from home in a stressful situation in which they had to combine the roles of teacher, parent and employee. This study aims to analyse how the closure of kindergartens and schools during the March–May 2020 lockdown in Slovenia changed the reported allocation of time, and perceived emotional exhaustion of parents working from home, compared to nonparents. We also focus on the differences in the impacts of lockdown between genders, status of family-provision and employment sectors of parents. Using data from a survey carried out on cohabiting and married individuals in Slovenia and applying a difference-in-difference estimator, we find that parents incurred a significant increase in their unpaid work burden, reductions in time devoted to paid work and leisure and suffered an increase in emotional exhaustion. Namely, Slovenian parents reported roughly 2 h less of paid and 4 h more of unpaid work per day during the lockdown in comparison to nonparents. The analysis also demonstrates that females performed more unpaid work and enjoyed less leisure before the lockdown, but the lockdown adjustment did not further increase gender inequality.
JEL Codes: J22, D13
... Whereas full-time employment -or at least long part-time employment -is common for women in Nordic countries, short part-time employment is widespread among women in most Anglo-Saxon and Continental countries. Meanwhile, although many women across post-Soviet countries, Southern Europe and the United States work full time, male breadwinning is also prevalent (Kowalewska and Vitali, 2020;Lewis et al., 2008). ...
An influential body of work has identified a ‘welfare-state paradox’: work-family policies that bring women into the workforce also undermine women’s access to the top jobs. Missing from this literature is a consideration of how welfare-state interventions impact on women’s representation at the board-level specifically, rather than managerial and lucrative positions more generally. This article contributes to addressing this ‘gap’. A fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis of 22 industrialised countries reveals how welfare-state interventions combine with gender boardroom quotas and targets in (not) bringing a ‘critical mass’ of women onto private-sector corporate boards. Overall, the analysis finds limited evidence in support of a welfare-state paradox. Moreover, widespread childcare services are associated with a greater share of women on boards. The results further suggest that ‘hard’, mandatory gender boardroom quotas are not necessary for achieving more women on boards; ‘soft’, voluntary recommendations can work too, but only under certain family policy constellations.
It is well-known that female breadwinning is negatively associated with women’s health and well-being, and that this negative relationship tends to be moderated by individuals’ gender attitudes. This study aims to contribute to the existing literature in two ways. First, this study uses a more direct measure of individuals’ aversion to female breadwinning. Second, this study considers societal gender culture beyond individual gender attitudes by applying the gender deviation and gender social stress frameworks from a multilevel perspective. Applying linear regression models with country-fixed effects to approximately 24,045 married women in 61 countries from the seventh wave of the World Values Survey, this study shows that female breadwinners are disadvantaged in their subjective well-being compared to those not serving as breadwinners only when they are averse to female breadwinning. This study also finds that the adverse health and well-being outcomes associated with being the female breadwinner are accentuated in countries with stronger societal aversion to female breadwinning, net of individual gender attitudes.
The paper studies the association between partners' relative incomes and union dissolution among couples in France. With the increase in dual-earner couples and women’s educational level, couples in which women earn more than their partners are structurally becoming more widespread. Because female breadwinning challenges long-lived social norms regarding traditional gender roles, scholars have theorized a higher risk of union dissolution among female-breadwinner couples compared to couples in other income arrangements. We estimate the risk of union dissolution using regression analyses on unique longitudinal data from French administrative sources containing an unconventionally high number of couples (4% of the population) and separation events (more than 100,000), as well as precise and reliable income measurement. Female-breadwinner couples face a higher risk of union dissolution compared to other couple types. This result is robust to various definitions of female breadwinning and controls for partners’ employment status. Contrary to recent research on other countries, we find no sign of a fading effect among younger cohorts. However, among younger, cohabiting couples and couples in registered partnerships the risk of union dissolution is lowest when both partners are employed and provide a similar share of the total couple’s income, suggesting the emergence of a new profile of stable couples. The female-breadwinner penalty in union dissolution is in place; also in France, it holds among married and cohabiting couples and registered partnerships, across all birth cohorts and levels of household income.
