Economica - 2008 - BARDASI - Marriage and Wages A Test of The Specialization Hypothesis

Economica (2008) 75, 569–591
doi:10.1111/j.1468-0335.2007.00630.x
Marriage and Wages: A Test of the Specialization

Hypothesis
By ELENA BARDASIw and MARK TAYLORz
wWorld Bank zUniversity of Essex
Final version received 11 December 2006.
We investigate the relationship between marriage and wages among men in Britain using panel data. Our
econometric specifications allow for observed and unobserved heterogeneity and explicitly test the role of
intra-household specialization in explaining the observed relationship. Our estimates provide evidence for
the existence of large selection effects into marriage based on observable and unobservable characteristics
that are positively correlated with wages. After accounting for individual-specific time-invariant effects
and a wide range of individual, household, job and employer related characteristics, we find a statistically
significant premium that can be attributed to productivity differences largely resulting from intra-
household specialization.
INTRODUCTION
Much research in applied economics comments on the advantages associated with
marriage. Marriage has been found to have positive effects both on reported levels of
happiness (Myers 1999; Diener et al. 2000; Stutzer and Frey 2003; Blanchflower and
Oswald 2004) and on health (Ross et al. 1990; Waite and Gallagher 2000; Wilson and
Oswald 2002; Ribar 2004). In addition, a male marriage premium is a common finding in
wage equations, indicating that marriage is associated with higher wages for men
(Korenman and Neumark 1991; Schoeni 1995; Loh 1996; Chun and Lee 2001; Ribar
2004). However, there is the question of causality: does marriage itself make men more
productive and therefore increase their earnings, or do more productive, higher earning
men get married? If marital status is genuinely productivity-enhancing, changes in the
marital status composition of the workforce will affect productivity. If there are no
productivity effects, changes in the marital status composition of the workforce will have
no impact on economic output. Investigating the causes of the male marriage premium
also helps our understanding of how the distribution of paid and unpaid work in the
household affects the employment patterns and wages of both partners, and can
contribute to the gender wage gap. In this paper we investigate in detail the presence of a
marriage wage premium among men in Britain using panel data from the first 13 years of
the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), covering the period 1991–2003. We add to
the literature by providing evidence of the size and causes of the marital wage premium in
Britain (most previous studies have used US data), and by explicitly testing one theory
developed in the literature to explain the relationship between marriage and wages: the
specialization hypothesis.
Previous research has reported large wage premiums associated with marriage,
varying between 10% and 40% in cross-sectional studies (Korenman and Neumark 1991,
Schoeni 1995). Studies that use panel data typically find this to be considerably reduced
when allowing for individual-specific fixed effects (Korenmen and Neumark 1991;
Cornwell and Rupert, 1995; Jacobsen and Rayack 1996; Hersch and Stratton 2000;
Stratton 2002). This indicates that at least part of the premium is related to the
unobserved characteristics of the worker. Studies focusing on men in Britain report a
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570 ECONOMICA [AUGUST
marriage premium ranging from 10% to 14%, although the majority of these use cross-
sectional data (Greenhalgh 1980; Schoeni 1995; Disney and Whitehouse 1996).
Exceptions are Joshi and Newell (1989), who use birth cohort data and report a wage
premium of about 10% for married men, and Davies and Peronaci (1997). The latter uses
data from the first four years of the BHPS and finds that the size of the premium falls
dramatically when allowing for time-invariant individual-specific effects. We build on
this earlier work, having the advantages of access to panel data over a longer period (and
so observing more wage and marital status changes) and many more control variables,
including very rich sets of individual, employer and job characteristics. Our contribution
to previous UK literature in general and to Davies and Peronaci (1997) in particular is
that we test explicitly the impact of household specialization on the marriage wage
premium by including in our analysis variables that capture the domestic division of
labour within households.
There are a number of possible explanations of why married men should earn more
than single men. Human capital accumulation may be more efficient when married than
when single, either because marriage increases the time available for investment in
market-specific human capital or because the partner contributes directly to a man’s
human capital. US evidence suggests that married men are more likely to receive work-
related training and so to accumulate human capital at a faster rate (Loh 1996).
However, studies using UK data suggest that this does not contribute to the marriage
wage premium among British men (Davies and Peronaci 1997). Alternatively, employers
may discriminate in favour of married men, either because they conform to a social norm
that men should be married and supporting families (Hill 1979) or because employers
associate marriage with valued unobservable characteristics such as ability, honesty,
loyalty and dependability. An observed wage premium for married men may also result
from the selection of high-wage men in to marriage (Nakosteen and Zimmer 1987; Gray
1997; Davies and Peronaci 1997). In the United States such selection has been found to
account for between 50% and 100% of the marriage wage premium (Korenmen and
Neumark 1991; Cornwell and Rupert 1995). For Britain, Davies and Peronaci (1997)
also stress the importance of selection, reporting that ‘men with higher earning power
seem more likely to get married and stay married’.
In this paper we focus explicitly on the specialization hypothesis, which emerges
directly from economies of scale and intra-household specialization (Becker 1973, 1974,
1991). According to this hypothesis, marriage facilitates the specialization of labour in
the household which has historically resulted in the man becoming market-intensive.
Increased specialization in the labour market enhances the man’s productivity, which
translates into higher wages. This mechanism operates either through his being able to
expend extra energy or effort into market work (Becker 1985) or through specialization,
allowing the man more time to invest in human capital and job-related skills (Kenny
1983; Hersch and Stratton 2000; Stratton 2002). Many previous studies of the impact of
intra-household specialization on men’s wages look at the role of the wife’s working
hours (Daniel 1992; Loh 1996; Gray 1997). Typically, these find that the wage premium is
reduced as the wife’s labour supply increases, consistent with the specialization
hypothesis. However, the validity of this approach for testing the specialization
hypothesis is questionable, as South and Spitze (1994) report that time spent in home
production by husbands in the United States does not vary by the employment status of
his wife.
A more direct test of the specialization explanation for the marriage wage premium is
to examine the domestic division of labour within households more explicitly. Hersch
2008] MARRIAGE AND WAGES 571
and Stratton (2000) find that the amount of time spent on housework has little impact
on the wage premium for married men in the United States, and therefore conclude
that the premium cannot be explained by intra-household specialization. However,
they do find that, conditional on other factors, married men spend less time on
housework than single men, which is evidence that specialization occurs. Hersch and
Stratton (1997) and Stratton (2002) use US data and find that the amount of time
spent on housework reduces women’s wages, but not through effort at the workplace.
We examine these issues in Britain by investigating the presence and size of the
wage premium for married men, and the impact of the allocation within couples of
domestic tasks (rather than on the time spent doing them) on this wage premium.
By using panel data and panel data methods, we are able to allow for possible
correlations between unobservables, marriage and wages. Failure to do so will bias the
coefficients of interestFsome of the returns attributed to marriage may actually be
returns to some unobserved qualities correlated with marriage. Our work provides new
evidence on the existence and causes of the marriage wage premium among married men
in Britain.
We find that, using cross-sectional analysis, married men in Britain enjoy a wage
premium of 17% over single, never-married men. However, controlling for the degree of
intra-household specialization reduces this premium by one-third, while each domestic
chore for which the woman is responsible increases the man’s wages by 2%. The use of
panel data methods reduces the marriage wage premium by more than 50%, indicating
that the majority of the premium observed in cross-sectional analysis is attributable to
individual-specific unobserved heterogeneity. However, the size of the premium increases
with the number of domestic chores for which the woman is responsible and falls with her
working hours, indicating that intra-household specialization is an important explana-
tion of the wage premium observed for married men in Britain.
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. Section I introduces the data used
and presents some initial descriptive statistics, while Section II outlines the econometric
and empirical specifications. Section III explains how we use the data to test the impact
of intra-household specialization on the wages of men, while Section IV discusses the
results. Section V summarizes and concludes.
I. DATA
Our analysis uses data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS). Since 1991, this
survey has collected information annually from a representative sample of 5500
households containing approximately 10,000 individuals. These same individuals are re-
interviewed each year on a wide range of subjects, including basic demographics,
household composition and circumstances, employment status and recent employment
history, job characteristics if employed, income from all sources and so on. At the time of
writing, 13 years of data are available covering the period 1991–2003. The use of panel
data is important in our context, as it allows us to examine how the wages of individuals
change as they change marital status and to allow for time-invariant unobserved
individual-specific effects. These may be correlated with both the probability of marriage
and with wages and therefore bias the coefficients of interest.
We restrict our analysis to men aged 18–59 (inclusive), who gave complete interviews
and were part of the core BHPS sample. We have excluded sample members who were
introduced in various booster samples, ethnic minorities, those in the armed forces and
those with second jobs.1 Furthermore, we do not use data from waves II (1992) or III
(1993), because a key variable for our analysis, relating to the household division of
labour, was not collected at these waves. The hourly wage we use as the dependent
variable is constructed from respondents’ reported usual gross income from their main
job and their reported weekly hours of work. This is expressed in real terms, deflated to
January 2002 prices.
We focus only on full-time employees (although our results are robust to the
inclusion of part-time workers). We dropped 644 men (4327 person-year observations)
who were in part-time or self-employment.2 The inclusion of self-employed workers in
our sample is problematic for several reasons. First, almost half of the self-employed did
not respond to the earnings question and had their earnings imputed (in contrast to only
7% of employees). Second, it is well documented that the self-employed have a tendency
to under-report their earnings. Third, income from self-employment includes returns
from both labour and physical capital. Fourth, the number of hours worked in a normal
week is likely to be less reliable for the self-employed than for employees. Finally, the
self-employed in the BHPS are allowed to report their earnings either before or after
income taxes and other deductions. Although the majority report pre-tax gross earnings,
a non-negligible minority report earnings at different stages of the taxation process.
Simulations are used to reconstruct gross earnings for this group, but this inevitably
introduces measurement error problems. Selection based on these criteria (and dropping
observations with missing information) results in a sample of 3885 men contributing
18,175 person-year observations.
Table 1 presents mean real hourly wages (in January 2002 pounds sterling) by marital
status (as recorded at each date of interview) for the pooled sample over the sample
TABLE 1
Wages, Ages and Working Hours by Marital Status
Mean Employment Spouse’s

Mean Mean working rate of working N person–
Marital status wage age hours spouse hoursn years
Single never married 7.45 27.9 39.6 3,950
(0.17) (0.34) (0.14)
Married 11.14 41.4 40.5 0.78 28.0 10,618
(0.16) (0.22) (0.15) (0.01) (0.26)
Cohabiting 9.11 32.3 40.4 0.83 33.9 2,705
(0.19) (0.34) (0.18) (0.01) (0.30)
Divorced/separated/widowed 10.10 42.3 40.6 902
(0.43) (0.57) (0.36)
Total 9.99 37.2 40.3 0.79 29.2 18,175
(0.11) (0.19) (0.10) (0.01) (0.22)
Notes
Standard errors in parentheses. BHPS 1991–2003. Hourly wages in GB pounds sterling deflated to January 2002
prices. Standard errors are adjusted for within individual correlation. Working hours are hours worked in a
usual week.
n
Conditional on the spouse working. Average wages among married significantly higher than those in other
marital states. Married men are significantly older than the cohabiting and single never married, and
significantly younger than the divorced/separated/widowed. Married men work significantly more hours per
week than the single never married. Partner of cohabiting men work significantly more hours per week than for
married men, and are significantly more likely to work.

TABLE 2
Wages, Ages and Working Hours by Changes in Marital Status
Remained single Partnered between

t 1 to t t 1 and t
Wages at t 1 8.14 8.45
(0.23) (0.27)
Wages at t 8.60 8.81
(0.23) (0.31)
Change in wages 0.46 0.36
(0.03) (0.18)
Hours at t 1 39.6 40.2
(0.17) (0.35)
Hours at t 39.5 40.1
(0.16) (0.33)
Change in hours 0.1 0.1
(0.07) (0.33)
Age 32.4 30.0
(0.46) (0.52)
N person–years 2680 261
Note
usual week. Difference in ages between those partnered between t 1 and t and those remaining single
statistically significant. The 261 instances of partnering between t 1 and t include 44 who married and 217
who entered cohabitation.
period. This indicates that currently married men enjoyed the highest wages, at d11.14
per hour, followed by men who were divorced, separated or widowed at d10.10 per hour.
Cohabiting men had average wages of d9.11 per hour, and single men who had never
been married had the lowest average wages, at d7.45 per hour. Therefore the raw
descriptive statistics confirm the presence of a wage premium for married men in Britain
of about 50% relative to the single never married, and 33% relative to the currently not
married. Cohabiting men earn 22% more than single never married men but 18% less
than married men. However, these mean wages do not control for differences in other
observable characteristics (for example, married men are typically older than unmarried
ones) or in unobservable traits. Table 1 also shows that single never married men worked
fewest hours on average, while the partners of cohabiting men were more likely to be
employed and worked more hours per week conditional on employment than those of
married men.
Table 2 summarizes men’s wages, ages and working hours, comparing men who enter
a partnership between t 1 and t with those who remained single. From this, we can
initially see that 261 (or 9%) of at-risk men either married or started cohabiting over the
sample period. Of these, 44 (or 17%) were married and the remainder entered
cohabitation. The table indicates that men who partnered received higher wages than
men who remained single, both before and after the eventFinitial evidence of selection
into marriage of high-wage men. However, men who remained single enjoyed higher
wage growth. Men who partnered worked on average half an hour more per week than
men who remained single and were 2.5 years younger.
II. ECONOMETRIC AND EMPIRICAL SPECIFICATION

Wages are assumed to be determined by the following equation:
ð1Þ lnðwit Þ ¼ Xit b þ Mit g þ ai þ eit ;
where wit is the wage of individual i in year t, Xit is a vector of observable individual,
household, job and employer-related characteristics that determine wages, Mit captures
the marital status of the individual, ai captures the unobserved, time-invariant
characteristics of the individual, and eit is a random error. Estimating this equation by
OLS implicitly assumes that ai is zero, and therefore is uncorrelated with both wit and Xit.
However, this is unrealistic in the present context, as Xit includes measures of education
and job tenure that are correlated with, for example, any unobserved ability captured in
ai. Furthermore, if this unobserved individual-specific effect is also correlated with the
probability of being married, then the main coefficient of interest, g, will be biased. In
particular, the selection of men with unobserved wage-enhancing characteristics into
marriage implies a positive correlation between Mit and ai, and results in an upwardly
biased estimate of g. Panel data allow us to overcome these potential problems of
endogeneity by estimating (1) using ‘within-group’ fixed effects, which is equivalent to the
simple OLS estimation in which the variables are defined as deviations from their
individual means over the panel period. Therefore the model to be estimated becomes
ð2Þ i Þ ¼ ðXit Xi Þb þ ðMit M

lnðwit Þ lnðw i Þg þ vit
This removes the individual fixed effect ai, and has been the standard approach in
previous investigations of the marriage wage premium that use longitudinal data from
the US (Korenmen and Neumark 1991; Cornwell and Rupert 1995; Jacobsen and
Rayack 1996). Selection into marriage may also depend on wage growth, so that changes
in wages and marital status will be interdependent, in which case the coefficient on the
marriage indicator will remain positively biased (Ginther and Zavodny 2001). To check
for this, we have used a difference-in-difference type approach to examine whether men
who married over the sample period exhibited greater wage growth prior to marriage
than other non-married men. We find no evidence that this is the case.
Our basic empirical specifications include a wide range of individual, household, job
and employer-related characteristics that have been shown in the literature to determine
wages, and that are likely to influence effort expended in both home and market
production. Our specifications are much richer that those estimated in previous UK
studies such as Davies and Peronaci (1997). All specifications include, for example,
variables that capture whether the man is an immigrant, is registered disabled or has a
limiting health condition; his region of residence, age and age-squared; the number of
children, highest educational qualification, recent employment history, industry and
sector of employment, establishment size, trade union coverage and membership, place
of work, job tenure, occupation and year indicators.3 It is possible that married men,
especially those with families, select jobs with fewer non-monetary benefits but higher
wages (Reed and Harford 1989). It is also possible that they could accept lower wage jobs
in return for more flexible working hours. We therefore also include a range of variables
that may identify non-pecuniary compensation such as the opportunity for regular
promotion, the number of weekly hours worked, the number of paid overtime hours;
receipt of regular pay increments, bonus payments or profit-sharing; and contributions to
an occupational pension scheme. In addition, we estimate a number of different empirical
specifications in order to test the robustness of our results and the role of household
specialization in explaining the marriage wage premium.
III. HYPOTHESIS TESTING

The specialization hypothesis derives directly from Becker (1973, 1974, 1991), in that
marriage allows the husband and wife to specialize in either market or domestic
production. Historically, the husband specializes in market work, and such household
division of labour allows him to allocate greater effort to this. Consequently, married
men are likely to have fewer domestic responsibilities than otherwise-similar single men,
and are able to expend less effort in home production and more effort in market
employment. His productivity and his wage increase as a result. This hypothesis has a
number of implications that can be directly tested with our data. In particular, if the
marriage wage premium is due to specialization, then the following would apply.
1. Men in cohabiting unions should exhibit a similar premium. We expect the same
specialization to occur irrespective of whether the couple is married or cohabiting,
although, given the less stable nature of cohabitation, we might expect greater
specialization in marriage. The BHPS data allow us to identify whether a man is
cohabiting at each date of interview, and a positive coefficient on this variable (relative
to the single never-married) would support the specialization hypothesis.
2. The wage premium should decline with the partner’s working hours (Loh 1996;
Davies and Peronaci 1997). This is because the degree of specialization in the
household declines as the hours worked by the woman increases.4 We can explicitly
test this by including the woman’s weekly working hours as an additional explanatory
variable in the wage regressions; a negative coefficient on this variable would support
the specialization hypothesis.
3. The process through which specialization results in a wage premium can be identified
by examining what happens when the partnership dissolves. If the wage premium is
due to the man exerting more effort in market work, the wage premium should
disappear when the partnership is dissolved. However, if the premium is due to his
having additional time to invest in human capital and work-related skills, the
premium should be retained to some extent on partnership dissolution, as such human
capital will not be lost (Kenny 1983). By including variables indicating partnership
dissolution, we can infer the mechanism through which the wage premium arises.
4. The wage premium should increase with the number of domestic chores for which the
wife or partner is responsible. The degree of specialization is higher in households
where the woman is responsible for a larger proportion of domestic work, such as
buying the groceries, cooking, cleaning and washing/ironing, and this should be
reflected in the size of the marriage premium for the man. The more chores for which
the woman is responsible, the greater is the additional effort that the man is able to
supply to the market. At each wave (except waves II and III), BHPS data contain
information on which partner in couple households was mainly responsible for a
range of domestic chores, allowing us to test for this explicitly. In particular married
and cohabiting men and women were asked:
‘Could you please say who mostly does these household jobs here? Is it mostly yourself, mostly
your spouse/partner, or is the work shared equally? (1) Grocery shopping; (2) Cooking; (3)
Washing and ironing; (4) Cleaning/hoovering.’
TABLE 3
Summary Statistics by Number of Chores for which the Wife is Mainly Responsible
No. of Married and Hours Spouse’s hours Hourly

chores Married Cohabiting cohabiting of work of work wage
0 7.4 15.1 8.9 40.1 29.1 10.52
(0.25) (0.60) (0.29)
1 10.2 19.5 12.1 40.1 30.2 10.03
(0.29) (0.50) (0.22)
2 19.0 24.4 20.1 40.1 27.0 10.35
(0.18) (0.45) (0.21)
3 26.6 20.7 25.4 40.1 21.5 10.25
(0.15) (0.46) (0.18)
4 37.0 20.3 33.6 41.1 17.9 11.63
(0.23) (0.42) (0.23)
N person–years 10,618 2705 13,323 13,323 13,323 13,323
Notes
usual week. Number of chores: defined as the number of the following for which the wife says that she is mainly
responsible: cooking; cleaning; laundry; grocery shopping; childcare. Differences in number of chores for which
the wife is mainly responsible between married and cohabiting couples are statistically significant. Differences in
wages, hours and spouse’s work hours by number of chores for which the wife is responsible are statistically
significant.
For each married or cohabiting man, we added together the number of chores for
which his partner says she is mostly responsible (taking a value of 0–4) and use this as a
direct measure of the degree of specialization in the household.5 A positive coefficient on
this variable would support the specialization hypothesis.
Table 3 summarizes some key variables by the number of chores for which the
woman was mainly responsible. This indicates that among married couples the wife
was responsible for all four chores in 37% of cases, and for at least three chores in 64%.
In 7% of married couples, the wife was not responsible for any chores, while in 10%
she was responsible for only one chore. The median number of chores for which the
wife was responsible was 3. There is rather less evidence of specialization in cohabit-
ing couplesFthe female partner was responsible for all five chores in 20% of co-
habiting couples and for at least four chores in 41%. The woman was not responsible
for any chores in 15% of cohabiting couples and for one chore in 20%. The median
number of chores for which the female partner in cohabiting couples was responsible
was 2.
Table 3 also provides evidence of intra-household specialization in other ways. There
is no relationship between the man’s working hours and the number of chores for which
the woman is responsible if the woman is responsible for fewer than four chores. (In each
case the man worked an average of 40 hours per week.) However, this increases to 41
hours per week in couples where the female partner was responsible for four chores.6
There is more convincing evidence of an inverse relationship between the number of
chores for which the female partner was responsible and her working hours. Women
responsible for fewer than two chores worked about 30 hours per week on average; this
falls to 18 hours per week among women responsible for all four chores.
There is evidence that intra-household specialization contributes to the marriage

wage premium among men, with a positive correlation between men’s wages and the
number of chores for which the female partner was responsible. In couple households in
which the female partner was responsible for fewer than four of the chores, the average
wage of the man was under d10.50 per hour; however, in couple households in which the
women were responsible for four chores, the average wages of the men were d11.63. In
the remainder of the paper we examine how robust these findings are in multivariate
analysis and allowing for the potential endogeneity of key variables such as the woman’s
working hours and the division of domestic labour.
IV. RESULTS
Table 4 presents the results from our regressions, with the natural log of (real) hourly
wages as the dependent variable and marital status and related variables among the
explanatory variables. We estimate two specifications, the first excluding the number of
chores for which the female partner was primarily responsible, and the second including
this variable. If the marriage wage premium can be explained by intra-household
specialization, then the coefficient on the marriage variable (g) should be zero when this
TABLE 4
Determinants of Wages of Men in Britain
OLS Fixed effects
[1] [2] [1] [2]

Married 0.1672 0.1087 0.0503 0.0288
[8.63] [5.11] [3.43] [1.81]
Cohabiting 0.1274 0.0757 0.0396 0.0199
[4.16] [3.88] [3.01] [1.39]
Divorced/separated/widowed 0.0901 0.0946 0.0062 0.0047
[3.50] [3.67] [0.36] [0.27]
Woman’s weekly hours of work 0.0015 0.0011 0.0007 -0.0005
[4.16] [3.14] [3.00] [2.36]
No. of domestic chores for 0.0207 0.0085
which woman responsible [5.14] [3.47]
R-squared 0.6021 0.6036 0.3683 0.3688
N observations 18,175
N individuals 3,885
Notes
Absolute ratio of coefficient to robust standard error in brackets. BHPS 1991–2003. Dependent variable is log
hourly wages (in pounds sterling) deflated to January 2002 prices. R-squareds in fixed effects specifications are
‘within’ R-squareds. Specifications also include number and ages of children, immigrant, registered disabled,
whether man has health condition that limits the type/amount of work possible, 9 industry indicators, 5 sector-
of-employment indicators (central government, local government, health/education sector, nationalized
industry, non-profit-making organization), 8 establishment-size indicators, trade union coverage, pension
scheme membership, 4 place-of-work indicators (work from home, place of work varies, travelling around,
other place of work), usual weekly hours weekly paid overtime hours, 7 regional indicators, age, age-squared,
highest educational qualification, elapsed job tenure, 3 occupation indicators, whether opportunities for
promotion, whether receive bonus or profit sharing, whether receive annual increments, weeks spent in
employment in last year, whether experienced unemployment in last year, whether experienced economic
inactivity in last year, year indicators.

explicit measure of the domestic division of labour is included. We present only the
coefficients on the key variables of interest, which include a variable indicating whether
or not the man is married, whether the man is cohabiting, whether he is divorced,
separated or widowed, the weekly hours of work of the woman, and the number of
domestic chores for which the woman is mainly responsible. The latter two take the value
zero if the man is not married or cohabiting. The coefficients on the other covariates are
presented in Table A1 in the Appendix, and are consistent with those from previous
research.
One drawback of our analysis is that we do not have data on the number of hours
devoted to household chores. Therefore, although our analysis holds constant the
number of chores, the time devoted to chores may change. As a result, the coefficients on
the marital status variable may capture both the true impact of marriage and any
deviations in time spent on the same number of chores.
OLS
For the time being, we ignore issues surrounding unobserved heterogeneity, potential
selection effects and endogeneity, and estimate models using OLS. In the first
specification we find a positive and significant effect of marriage on wages, resulting in
a wage premium of 17% relative to the single never married.7 This estimated premium is
much lower than those observed in the raw data, indicating selection into marriage based
on observable characteristics, i.e. married men have observable characteristics that are
also associated with higher wages. The results indicate that cohabiting men also enjoy a
wage premium relative to men who have never married, of about 13%Fmen in
partnerships enjoy higher wages irrespective of whether or not they are legally married,
evidence in favour of the specialization hypothesis (see also Daniel 1992; Loh 1996;
Cohen 1999, 2002). We also find that the size of the premium enjoyed by married or
cohabiting men falls with the number of hours worked by their partner, which again
supports the specialization hypothesis. Although the size of the coefficient is relatively
small, it is negative and precisely estimated, indicating that each additional hour worked
by the woman reduces the wage premium of the man by 0.15%. This suggests that a
married man whose wife works a 40-hour week will enjoy a wage premium of 11%
relative to a single never married man, compared with a premium of 17% for a married
man whose wife does not work. The results also indicate that men whose marriage has
dissolved enjoy a premium (of 9%) over men who have never married. This suggests that
human capital accumulation is the mechanism through which increased specialization
results in higher wages among married men.
The second specification includes the number of chores for which the female partner
was responsible. The results from this indicate that the wage premium associated with
marriage falls substantially (to 11%), suggesting that a large proportion of the premium
associated with marriage can be directly attributed to specialization in the household.
The coefficient on the number of chores for which the woman is responsible is positive
and statistically significant, and the size indicates that a married man whose wife is
mostly responsible for all four domestic chores listed enjoys a wage premium of 19%
relative to a single never married man, and of 8% relative to a married man whose wife is
responsible for none of the chores. (This assumes that single never married men are
responsible for all domestic chores, which seems reasonable.) Cohabitation is associated
with a wage premium of 8%. These OLS results therefore suggest that observable
characteristics (including the domestic division of labour) explain a large proportion of
the marriage wage premium observed in the raw data; but even so a premium of about
11% remains, all else equal. Furthermore, we find that a large proportion of the wage
premium can be attributed to intra-household specialization. However, at this stage we
cannot establish whether this premium is due to genuine productivity gains associated
with marriage or to spurious effects resulting from selection into marriage on the basis of
unobservable characteristics.
Fixed effects
The results from the within-group fixed-effects models indicate that, when allowing for
time-invariant unobserved characteristics, the size of the marriage premium falls to 5%
(in specification (1)). Therefore two-thirds of the premium observed in the OLS estimates
is due to unobserved characteristics that are positively correlated with both marriage and
wages. However, a marriage wage premium persists, and is similar in size to the 6%
found by Davies and Peronaci (1997) using random effects models.8 In specification (2),
which introduces the explicit measure of domestic production, the coefficient on the
married indicator remains positive, but is on the margins of statistical significance. (It is
significant at the 7% level.) The impact of cohabitation is no longer statistically
significant. Stratton (2002), using US data, also finds that the marriage premium persists
while the cohabitation premium disappears when allowing for individual-specific fixed
effects. Of the other variables of interest, the coefficients on the woman’s weekly hours of
work and the number of chores for which the female partner is responsible remain
statistically significant. Each additional hour worked by the woman reduces the wage
premium by 0.05%, evidence in favour of the specialization hypothesis. The coefficient
on our intra-household specialization variable is positive and statistically significant,
indicating that each additional domestic chore carried out by the woman increases the
man’s wages by 0.9%. A married man whose wife is responsible for all four domestic
chores receives a wage premium of about 6% relative to a single never-married man,
although this premium falls by one-third if the woman also works 40 hours per week in
the labour market. These results suggest that a large proportion of the marriage premium
observed in cross-sectional analysis is due to unobserved characteristics correlated with
both marriage and wages. Most of the remaining premium attributable to higher
productivity can be explained by specialization and the allocation of chores within the
household. The lack of significance of the coefficient on the divorced, separated or
widowed variable suggests that the mechanism through which this specialization
translates into higher wages is the extra effort that married men are able to expend in the
market.
Marital status changes

Equation (2) indicates that the parameter of interest (g) is identified by individuals who
experienced a change in their marital status over the sample period. Men who remain
married, cohabiting, widowed/separated or divorced or single never married over the
period do not contribute to the estimate of g (but may contribute to the estimation of
other coefficients in the model). Because of this, we have estimated the models separately,
including only the 539 men who experienced a change in their marital status over the
sample period (and who contribute 3969 person-year observations).9 The results are
shown in Table 5 and are consistent with those previously discussed, although the
impacts of marriage and cohabitation are now the same. The OLS estimates indicate a
TABLE 5
Determinants of Wages of Men in Britain: Men who Changed Marital Status over
the Sample Period
OLS Fixed effects
[1] [2] [1] [2]

Married 0.1224 0.0732 0.0354 0.0049
[3.50] [1.81] [1.67] [0.20]
Cohabiting 0.1201 0.0741 0.0322 0.0043
[3.73] [2.04] [1.68] [0.19]
Divorced/separated/widowed 0.0431 0.0441 0.0222 0.0219
[1.18] [1.20] [1.05] [1.03]
Woman’s weekly hours of work 0.0026 0.0022 0.0008 0.0006
[3.49] [2.95] [1.80] [1.37]
R-squared 0.6202 0.6214 0.2760 0.3036
N observations 3969
N individuals 539
Notes: Absolute ratio of coefficient to robust standard error in brackets. BHPS 1991–2003. Dependent variable
is log hourly wages (in pounds sterling) deflated to January 2002 prices. See notes to Table 4.
12% wage premium associated with marriage and cohabitation, which falls by 0.26% for
each hour the woman works in the labour market. Therefore a man whose partner works
a 40-hour week enjoys a premium of 2% compared with a single never-married man. The
introduction of the number of chores for which the woman is responsible reduces the
premium to partnership to 7% while each additional chore for which the woman is
responsible increases the man’s wages by 1.79%. In the fixed-effects specification, the
premium to partnership effectively disappears. However, the impact of the number of
chores for which the woman is responsible remains positive and precisely estimated, with
each chore increasing the man’s wages by 1.2%. A married man whose wife is responsible
for all four chores would enjoy a wage premium of almost 5% relative to an otherwise
similar married man whose wife was not responsible for any of the chores. These
estimates suggest that the wage premium for men associated with marriage can be
explained by the intra-household specialization of labour.
Married only
It can be argued that the correct test of the specialization hypothesis is whether a married
or cohabiting man whose partner is responsible for domestic production enjoys a wage
premium relative to an otherwise similar married or cohabiting man who does a larger
share of the domestic production himself. (Similarly, a single man who hires an outside
agent to perform the domestic chores should enjoy a premium relative to single men who
do the chores themselves. Unfortunately, this information is not available in these data.)
In the fixed-effects specifications this translates into whether a married or cohabiting man
receives higher-than-average wages when his partner takes on more responsibility for the
domestic chores. Therefore we estimate the same specifications focusing only on married
TABLE 6
Determinants of Wages among Married Men in Britain
OLS Fixed effects

Cohabiting 0.0324 0.0162
[2.38] [1.58]
Woman’s weekly hours of work 0.0011 0.0005
[3.16] [1.98]
R-squared 0.5777 0.3373
N observations 13,323
N individuals 2839
is log hourly wages (in pounds sterling) deflated to January 2002 prices. See notes to Table 4.
or cohabiting men, with the results shown in Table 6. The OLS results indicate that
cohabiting men earn 3% less than married men, and each hour that the man’s partner
contributes to the labour market reduces his wage by 0.11%. Furthermore, we find that
each domestic chore for which the female partner is responsible increases the man’s wage
by 2%. Therefore a man whose partner is responsible for all four chores enjoys a wage
premium of 8% relative to a man whose partner is not responsible for any of the chores.
This premium is halved if the partner works 40 hours per week.
These findings persist in the fixed-effects specification, although the negative
coefficient on the cohabitation indicator is no longer statistically significant. Each
additional hour worked by the man’s partner reduces his wages by 0.05%, while each
additional chore carried out by his partner increases his wages by 0.8%. Therefore a man
whose partner is responsible for all domestic production (four chores) receives wages that
are 3% higher than an otherwise similar man whose partner is responsible for none of the
chores. Again, however, this is halved if his partner also works 40 hours per week.
Alternative specifications
The results discussed thus far suffer from an additional problem: the potential
endogeneity of the woman’s hours of work and the number of domestic chores for
which she is responsible. Endogeneity driven by any individual-specific time-invariant
characteristic is removed by the fixed-effects estimation technique. However, it is possible
that women who marry highly paid men subsequently reduce their working hours and
increase their domestic responsibilities, while those who marry men with lower wages
may work more hours to maintain a reasonable standard of living and reduce their
domestic responsibilities. As a result, the coefficients on the woman’s working hours will
be negatively biased, while those on her domestic production will be positively biased.
We deal with the potential endogeneity of these key variables using instrumental
variables (IV). In particular, we use the woman’s responses to a set of attitudinal
questions as instruments for her working hours and the number of chores for which she is
responsible. At alternate waves, individuals are asked the extent to which they personally
agree of disagree with the following statements:
A preschool child is likely to suffer if his/her mother works.

All in all, family life suffers when the woman has a full-time job.
Having a full-time job is the best way for a woman to be an individual person.
Employers should make special arrangements to help mothers combine jobs and
childcare.
We created four binary variables that take the value 1 if the female partner agrees or
strongly agrees with the statement in question and 0 otherwise, and used these as
instruments for her working hours and domestic responsibilities. To be valid instruments,
responses to these attitudinal questions need to be correlated with the woman’s working
hours and household production (and changes to these over time), but to be orthogonal
with the unobserved attributes of the husband that correlate with wages. Responses to
these questions are summarized in Tables A2 and A3 in the Appendix. We suggest that
the woman’s responses to these questions are good indicators of her attitudes to work,
parental responsibilities and gender roles within the household, which will determine her
number of work hours and domestic production. However, it is possible that wives who
express traditional attitudes may be more likely not only to do more of the domestic
chores and less market work, but also to select spouses who are good breadwinners and
earn high wages. If this is the case, the effects of the attitudes variables may also work
through the unobserved attributes of the husband, reducing their validity as instruments.
Responses to the attitudinal questions prove to be jointly and independently poorly
determined when entered into the wage equation (F-tests of joint significance yield
p-values of 0.3 in both OLS and fixed-effects specifications), but are highly correlated with
the potentially endogenous variables. In both the woman’s working hours model and the
woman’s domestic chores model, F-tests of joint significance yield p-values of 0.0000. We
also estimated reduced-form outcome equations in which we included the potentially
endogenous explanatory variables together with the residuals from the first stage
equations. The null that the coefficients on the residuals were zero could not be rejected.
The results from the IV estimations are summarized in Table 7. As these are
estimated using only data from odd-numbered waves, we also present the comparable
coefficients from OLS and within-group fixed-effects models. The OLS results again
TABLE 7
IV Regression Results
Fixed Fixed effects

OLS 2-stage IV effects MLE IV
Woman’s weekly hours of work 0.0012 0.0028 0.0001 0.0096
[3.22] [2.28] [0.30] [1.75]
No. of domestic chores for 0.0185 0.0262 0.0069 0.0141
which woman responsible [4.32] [1.09] [1.96] [0.85]
R-squared 0.5743 0.5715 0.3666 0.2491
N person–years 7350
N individuals 2653
is log hourly wages (in pounds sterling) deflated to January 2002 prices. Estimated using odd waves of data only
as attitude questions used as instruments only asked at odd waves. Standard errors corrected using
bootstrapping where appropriate.

indicate a negative relationship between a married man’s wages and his partner’s number
of weekly hours of work, and a positive relationship between his wages and her amount
of domestic production. The next column focuses on the pooled IV estimates estimated
using two-stage least-squares. In the two-stage procedure the first stage equations take
the form of a Tobit (for women’s working hours) and an ordered probit (for the number
of chores), the results of which are shown in Table A4 in the Appendix. The IV estimates
indicate that, allowing for potential endogeneity, the absolute size of the impact of the
woman’s working hours actually increases and remains statistically significant. (Note
that the standard errors in the wage equation have been corrected using bootstrapping.)
Therefore, rather than women married to high-wage men choosing to work less in the
labour market, it appears that the bias works the other wayFwomen married to high-
wage men choose to work more hours. Although this may seem counterintuitive, there is
other evidence from both the United States and the United Kingdom supporting this
relationship which is consistent with positive assortative mating (see e.g. Blackaby et al.
2005; Juhn and Murphy 1997). We summarize the relationship found in the raw data
between the man’s position in the wage distribution and his partner’s working hours in
Table A5 in the Appendix. High-productivity men partner with high-productivity
women. The coefficient on domestic production also increases in size but loses its
statistical significance.10
The estimates from the fixed-effects maximum likelihood IV are similar. We find that
the impact of the woman’s weekly hours of market work is negative and statistically
significant at the 10% level. Again, we find that controlling for the potential endogeneity
of the woman’s working hours increases the size of the coefficient. The impact of the
number of chores for which the woman is responsible remains positive but loses its
statistical significance. These results suggest that the wage premium for married men is
not due to the allocation of chores within the household, but instead can be explained by
the number of hours the woman works in the labour market. Therefore it may be the
time that the woman spends in domestic production at home that determines the wage
premium for married men in Britain, and not the allocation of chores per se.
V. CONCLUSION
In this paper we provide new and unique evidence on the relationship between marriage
and wages among men in Britain. Cross-sectional analysis yields a wage premium for
married men of 17%, consistent with much of the previous literature. However, this falls
by one-third when explicitly controlling for intra-household specialization: each domestic
chore for which the woman is responsible increases the man’s wage by 2%. Using panel
data and panel data methods, we find that the marriage wage premium falls, indicating
that more than half of the observed premium in cross-sectional analysis is caused by
unobserved individual-specific heterogeneity and/or selection effects. Married men have
unobserved characteristics that are also correlated with wages. The proportion of the
premium explained by unobserved individual factors is similar to that found in the US
literature. Korenman and Neumark (1991) find that less than half of the premium is
accounted for by unobserved individual-specific effects, while Cornwell and Rupert
(1995) find that the estimated returns to marriage are virtually zero once such effects are
allowed for. Our results are consistent with previous UK literature, suggesting that
employers use marriage as a signalFa large proportion of the marriage premium is due
to unobservable characteristics that are valued both by wives and by employers, such as
motivation, loyalty, dependability and determination. Further research focusing on

linked worker–firm data may shed more light on this issue.
Nevertheless, a relatively small but statistically significant marriage premium remains
even when allowing for a wide range of individual, household, job and employer-related
characteristics and time-invariant individual-specific unobservable effects. Our preferred
panel estimates indicate that the size of this premium increases with the number of
domestic chores for which the woman is responsible, and falls with the woman’s working
hours. The relative sizes of the coefficients suggest that a married man whose wife does
not work but is responsible for four domestic chores enjoys a wage premium of 3%
relative to a married man whose wife is responsible for none of the chores. However, this
is halved if the wife also works 40 hours per week in the labour market. We show that the
effects of the hours worked largely persist when allowing for the potential endogeneity of
the woman’s decision to work. Our estimates therefore provide evidence that the wage
premium among married men in Britain is explained by the hours of work his wife
contributes to the labour market. This may indicate that it is time spent at home, rather
than the allocation of domestic responsibilities, that is the important factor. Further
research, possibly making use of time-use data, may provide further insights.
APPENDIX
Table A1 lists the determinants of wages of men in Britain. Table A2 lists the proportion of wives
stating how much of domestic chores they are responsible for. Table A3 records the proportion of
wives for whom this situation changed during the period of study, Table A4 gives the first-stage IV
estimates, and Table A5 summarizes the wife’s working hours as related to her husband’s hourly wage.
TABLE A1
Determinants of Wages of Men in Britain
OLS Fixed effects
[1] [2] [1] [2]

Age 0.056 0.056 0.074 0.073
[15.99] [15.99] [8.14] [8.11]
(Age-squared)/100 0.063 0.063 0.103 0.103
[14.01] [14.08] [29.55] [29.49]
No. of children 0.011 0.008 0.001 0.002
[1.49] [1.18] [0.22] [0.49]
Has child aged under 5 years 0.021 0.020 0.024 0.023
[1.50] [1.44] [2.68] [2.62]
Has child aged 5–10 years 0.011 0.009 0.001 0.001
[0.70] [0.59] [0.05] [0.13]
Non-UK national 0.006 0.003
[0.14] [0.08]
Disabled 0.144 0.144 0.001 0.001
[3.30] [3.29] [0.03] [0.00]
Health limits type/amount of work 0.086 0.084 0.023 0.023
[5.53] [5.36] [2.32] [2.30]
Highest qualification degree or equivalent 0.364 0.367 0.142 0.143
[15.74] [15.87] [4.28] [4.33]
Highest qualification A-levels or equivalent 0.198 0.198 0.026 0.024
[11.88] [11.89] [1.12] [1.04]
Highest qualification GCSE or equivalent 0.142 0.141 0.002 0.001
[7.94] [7.93] [0.09] [0.02]
TABLE A1
CONTINUED
OLS Fixed effects
[1] [2] [1] [2]

Highest qualification below GCSE 0.105 0.104 0.046 0.042
[4.91] [4.90] [1.36] [1.25]
Hours of work 0.010 0.010 0.013 0.013
[12.04] [12.28] [29.32] [29.43]
Overtime hours 0.017 0.017 0.017 0.018
[23.68] [24.00] [40.03] [40.14]
Covered by a trades union 0.022 0.021 0.005 0.005
[2.11] [2.04] [0.72] [0.73]
Pension scheme member 0.125 0.124 0.051 0.051
[11.57] [11.58] [7.98] [8.00]
Job tenure 0.001 0.001 0.001 0.001
[1.75] [1.75] [3.30] [3.34]
Opportunities for promotion 0.020 0.020 0.005 0.005
[2.39] [2.41] [1.12] [1.10]
Regular pay increments 0.017 0.016 0.004 0.004
[2.16] [2.07] [0.81] [0.80]
Receives bonus payments 0.047 0.045 0.029 0.028
[6.23] [6.04] [6.21] [6.11]
Works from home 0.010 0.009 0.014 0.013
[0.18] [0.17] [0.55] [0.50]
Work involves travelling from place to place 0.025 0.026 0.001 0.001
[2.00] [2.11] [0.18] [0.13]
Place of work varies 0.057 0.056 0.004 0.004
[4.09] [4.01] [0.46] [0.45]
Other place of work 0.089 0.088 0.019 0.020
[2.51] [2.48] [0.77] [0.82]
Professional or managerial occupation 0.404 0.400 0.095 0.095
[27.49] [27.36] [9.57] [9.56]
Other nonmanual occupation 0.139 0.138 0.010 0.010
[9.10] [9.00] [0.95] [0.95]
Skilled manual occupation 0.094 0.092 0.034 0.034
[7.95] [7.78] [4.31] [4.28]
Weeks spent employed in past year 0.002 0.002 0.002 0.002
[3.93] [3.87] [3.63] [3.61]
Experienced unemployment in past year 0.088 0.089 0.056 0.056
[5.17] [5.22] [4.72] [4.75]
Experienced economic inactivity in past year 0.058 0.061 0.021 0.022
[2.18] [2.27] [1.24] [1.27]
Constant 0.935 0.948 1.212 1.220
[11.72] [11.90] [4.46] [4.49]
1-digit industry dummies Yes Yes Yes Yes
Sector of employment dummies (5) Yes Yes Yes Yes
Firm size dummies (8) Yes Yes Yes Yes
Year dummies (10) Yes Yes Yes Yes
R-squared 0.6021 0.6036 0.3683 0.3688
Notes
Absolute ratio of coefficient to robust standard error in brackets. BHPS 1991–2003. Dependent variable is log
hourly wages (in pounds sterling) deflated to January 2002 prices. R-squareds in fixed effects specifications are
‘within’ R-squareds. Specifications also include marital status dummies and spouse’s hours of work.
Specification [2] also includes the number of chores for which the woman is responsible. See Table 4 for details.

TABLE A2
Proportion of Wives Agreeing or Strongly Agreeing with the Statements
Married &
Married Cohabiting cohabiting
Preschool child suffers if mother works 0.217 0.217 0.217
Family life suffers when woman has a full-time job 0.260 0.205 0.249
Having full-time job is best way for a woman to be 0.231 0.358 0.256
individual person
Employers should make special arrangements to help 0.621 0.717 0.640
mothers combine jobs and childcare
N person–years 5904 1446 7350
Notes
BHPS 1991–2003. Questions asked only at odd numbered waves.
TABLE A3
Proportion of Wives Changing their Opinions over the Period
Married &
cohabiting
Preschool child suffers if mother works 0.140
Family life suffers when woman has a full-time job 0.158
Having full-time job is the best way for a woman to be an individual person 0.183
Employers should make special arrangements to help mothers combine jobs and 0.133
childcare
Total proportion experiencing at least one change in opinion 0.420
Proportion of wives that experience at least one change in opinion 0.391
N person–years 4883
Notes
BHPS 1991–2003. Questions asked only at odd numbered waves.
TABLE A4
First Stage IV Estimates
Pooled Fixed effects
Spouse’s Spouse’s Spouse’s Spouse’s

hours of number hours of number
work of chores work of chores
Instruments: The woman believes that
Preschool child suffers if mother works 3.520 0.072 0.021 0.008
[5.72] [1.66] [0.05] [0.18]
Family life suffers if woman works full-time 4.553 0.287 1.333 0.105
[7.75] [6.56] [2.96] [2.50]
FT job best way for woman to be individual 4.341 0.177 0.982 0.071
[9.05] [4.78] [2.48] [1.93]
Employers should help mothers with childcare 0.266 0.089 0.527 0.092
[0.49] [2.01] [1.16] [2.17]
Woman’s age 0.544 0.127 0.109 0.181
[3.88] [10.91] [0.80] [14.25]

TABLE A4
CONTINUED

Woman’s age squared/100 0.831 0.142 0.141 0.193
[5.26] [10.35] [1.03] [15.14]
Other covariates
Cohabiting 1.436 0.176 1.111 0.167
[2.46] [3.71] [1.67] [2.68]
Age 1.206 0.090 2.636 0.236
[5.69] [5.22] [3.62] [3.47]
(Age-squared)/100 1.825 0.117 1.188 0.174
[7.20] [5.56] [4.14] [6.47]
No. of children 4.348 0.121 2.852 0.154
[14.51] [4.77] [9.51] [5.52]
Has child aged under 5 years 12.075 0.230 9.421 0.231
[17.51] [4.31] [16.79] [4.41]
Has child aged 5–10 years 4.734 0.151 4.379 0.132
[6.28] [2.73] [7.69] [2.48]
Non-UK national 1.305 0.127
[0.97] [1.01]
Disabled 3.122 0.077 0.489 0.157
[1.46] [0.48] [0.27] [0.94]
Health limits type/amount of work 1.404 0.038 0.680 0.036
[1.66] [0.59] [0.87] [0.49]
Highest qualification degree or equivalent 0.570 0.141 2.332 0.205
[0.64] [1.74] [0.92] [0.86]
Highest qualification A-levels or equivalent 0.475 0.023 1.575 0.134
[0.69] [0.36] [1.10] [1.00]
Highest qualification GCSE or equivalent 0.936 0.003 0.505 0.138
[1.24] [0.05] [0.31] [0.90]
Highest qualification below GCSE 0.147 0.034 1.296 0.419
[0.16] [0.38] [0.59] [2.03]
Hours of work 0.004 0.007 0.039 0.004
[0.13] [2.68] [1.17] [1.14]
Overtime hours 0.105 0.008 0.018 0.005
[2.93] [2.57] [0.56] [1.69]
Covered by a trades union 0.185 0.050 0.665 0.022
[0.37] [1.22] [1.32] [0.46]
Pension scheme member 0.142 0.003 1.029 0.020
[0.28] [0.08] [2.01] [0.43]
Job tenure 0.001 0.001 0.004 0.001
[0.30] [0.40] [1.28] [1.64]
Opportunities for promotion 0.402 0.007 0.281 0.009
[0.92] [0.21] [0.77] [0.27]
Regular pay increments 0.267 0.030 0.276 0.010
[0.61] [0.92] [0.78] [0.31]
Receives bonus payments 0.370 0.125 0.100 0.065
[0.86] [3.88] [0.29] [2.00]
Works from home 1.709 0.131 1.021 0.001
[0.84] [0.80] [0.62] [0.00]
Work involves travelling from place to place 0.110 0.053 0.229 0.073
[0.18] [1.11] [0.37] [1.29]

TABLE A4
CONTINUED

Place of work varies 0.164 0.058 0.678 0.004
[0.23] [1.06] [1.03] [0.07]
Other place of work 2.082 0.222 0.482 0.267
[0.91] [1.03] [0.27] [1.58]
Professional or managerial occupation 0.492 0.169 0.463 0.038
[0.69] [2.94] [0.62] [0.54]
Other nonmanual occupation 0.860 0.051 0.212 0.074
[1.02] [0.74] [0.25] [0.92]
Skilled manual occupation 0.604 0.094 0.203 0.024
[0.91] [1.88] [0.33] [0.43]
Weeks spent employed in past year 0.074 0.002 0.006 0.002
[1.23] [0.49] [0.13] [0.46]
Experienced unemployment in past year 2.692 0.045 0.339 0.015
[1.83] [0.48] [0.31] [0.14]
Experienced economic inactivity in past year 0.655 0.191 1.431 0.053
[0.29] [1.26] [0.83] [0.33]
1-digit industry dummies Yes Yes Yes Yes
Sector of employment dummies (5) Yes Yes Yes Yes
Firm size dummies (8) Yes Yes Yes Yes
Year dummies (10) Yes Yes Yes Yes
p-value (joint significance of identifying vars) 0.0000 0.0000 0.0030 0.0000
N observations 7350
N individuals 2653
Notes
Absolute ratio of coefficient to robust standard error in brackets. BHPS 1991–2003. See text for details of
estimation procedures.
TABLE A5
Wife’s Working Hours by Husband’s Hourly Wage
Married and
Married Cohabiting cohabiting
Hourly wage All Workingn All Workingn All Workingn

Lowest 20% 21.2 28.1 25.2 33.6 22.4 29.7
2nd Quintile 22.4 28.6 27.4 33.4 23.7 29.8
3rd Quintile 22.7 28.5 29.3 33.7 24.2 29.7
4th Quintile 23.0 28.4 29.5 34.4 24.0 29.5
Highest 20% 20.0 26.6 30.2 34.4 21.3 27.7
N person-years 10,618 8286 2705 2249 13,323 10,535
Notes
BHPS 1991–2003. Hourly wages in GB pounds sterling deflated to January 2002 prices. Working hours are
hours worked in a usual week.
n
Conditional on wife working. Differences in women’s working hours by men’s hourly wage statistically
significant except for cohabiting couples conditional on working.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This paper has benefited from helpful discussions with Leslie Stratton, and from comments
received from a seminar at Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria, and participants at the 18th
Annual Conference of the European Society for Population Economics in Bergen, Norway, and the
2005 BHPS Research Conference in Colchester. Thanks also to Killian Mullan for providing
supporting evidence from the UK National Time Use Survey 2000–01. The support of the
Economic and Social Research Council (UK), and the University of Essex is gratefully
acknowledged. BHPS data are available from the UK Data Archive at the University of Essex.
NOTES
1. Ethnic minorities are excluded because the small samples in the BHPS are unlikely to be representative.
We exclude those in the armed services, as their wage is not a true reflection of their productivity, while
men with second jobs are excluded because it is sometimes difficult identifying which is their main job.
2. Our main results are robust to the inclusion of men in part-time work and self-employment. Descriptive
statistics indicate that these dropped cases are on average less likely to be married (58% compared with
61% of full-time employees) and are more likely to be cohabiting or single never married (15% and 22%
compared with 13% and 19%). They have hourly wages that are on average 15% lower than men who
are full-time employees. Including these into our estimating sample reduces the size of the marriage
wage premium in all specifications (although not significantly), and the positive and statistically
significant coefficients on the number of chores for which the woman is responsible remain.
3. The inclusion of job tenure and recent employment history is particularly important, as married men
may be more likely to work more hours and may also be less likely to experience employment
interruptions. If this is the case, a significant marital wage differential may be spurious and attributable
to insufficient labour market experience variables. Our data allow us to include a number of such
controls.
4. Descriptive statistics indicate that intra-household specialization does indeed decline as the working
hours of the woman increase. On average, men with wives employed on a full-time basis are responsible
for significantly more domestic chores (as reported by both the husband and the wife) than those men
with a non-working wife.
5. This takes the value 0 if the man is not married or cohabiting; we therefore implicitly assume that men
who are not married or cohabiting are responsible for all the chores themselves. This assumption seems
reasonable, and evidence from the UK National Time Use Survey (2000–01) indicates that men in
couples in Britain spend on average 20 minutes less per day than men living in single-person households
cooking, doing the laundry and shopping. We have experimented with using the number of chores for
which the male partner says the woman is responsible for, and the results are qualitatively similar. An
alternative would be to use the number of chores for which the husband is responsible. However we
rejected this option, as in 80% of couple households both husband and wife report that the husband is
not responsible for any chores, while in 15% he is responsible for only one chore. There is therefore little
variation in this variable either across individuals or over time.
6. It could be argued that the man’s working hours themselves are an indicator of intra-household
specialization. However, we argue that they are unlikely to be a reliable indicator for several reasons.
First, two-thirds of men working full-time in the sample supply between 37 and 40 hours per week to the
market, indicating little variation in hours worked. Second, there is evidence of persistence in hours
constraints over time (Böheim and Taylor 2003, 2004), suggesting that men may not be able to adjust
their working hours smoothly or immediately in response to changes in household specialization. Third,
men’s working hours are potentially endogenous in any wage equation, as the wage will reflect previous
and current effort in the job. Also, working hours are used here to construct the wage variable, and
therefore it is difficult to infer any causal relationship between working hours and the wage. We have
included men’s working hours as control variables in all specifications shown, although the results are
robust to excluding them.
7. Davies and Peronaci (1997) report a cross-sectional premium of 10% using the first four years of BHPS
data, but include controls only for experience, education, cohort and region in their models.
8. Davies and Peronaci (1997) find fixed-effects estimates to be unsatisfactory owing to the small number
of marital status changes in the first four years of BHPS data.
9. There are 261 instances of men partnering over the period, 291 moves between cohabitation and
marriage, and 159 moves out of a partnership. Note that these sum to more than 539 because some men
experience multiple marital status changes over the sample period.
10. It is also possible that these results are caused by poor specifications of the first-stage equations for the
woman’s working hours and her domestic responsibilities. The model explaining the woman’s working
hours explains 25% of the variation in the pooled specification, and 17% in the fixed-effects
specification. That explaining the number of domestic chores for which the woman was responsible
explained 17% of the variation in the pooled specification and 12% of the variation in the fixed-effects
specification. Therefore, although technically we have valid instruments, the overall fit of these models is
weak. Table A4 in the Appendix reproduces the estimates from the first-stage models.
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Economica (2008) 75, 569–591

Marriage and Wages: A Test of the Specialization

Final version received 11 December 2006.

Mean Employment Spouse’s

r The London School of Economics and Political Science 2007

Remained single Partnered between

II. ECONOMETRIC AND EMPIRICAL SPECIFICATION

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III. HYPOTHESIS TESTING

No. of Married and Hours Spouse’s hours Hourly

There is evidence that intra-household specialization contributes to the marriage

OLS Fixed effects

[1] [2] [1] [2]

r The London School of Economics and Political Science 2007

Marital status changes

OLS Fixed effects

[1] [2] [1] [2]

OLS Fixed effects

A preschool child is likely to suffer if his/her mother works.

Fixed Fixed effects

r The London School of Economics and Political Science 2007

motivation, loyalty, dependability and determination. Further research focusing on

OLS Fixed effects

[1] [2] [1] [2]

[1] [2] [1] [2]

r The London School of Economics and Political Science 2007

Pooled Fixed effects

Spouse’s Spouse’s Spouse’s Spouse’s

r The London School of Economics and Political Science 2007

Spouse’s Spouse’s Spouse’s Spouse’s

r The London School of Economics and Political Science 2007

Spouse’s Spouse’s Spouse’s Spouse’s

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r The London School of Economics and Political Science 2007

r The London School of Economics and Political Science 2007

r The London School of Economics and Political Science 2007

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