Gender norms and income misreporting within households

Anja Roth and Michaela Slotwinski

No 20-001, ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research

Abstract: We show that the discontinuity in the distribution of surveyed female income shares at the margin where a woman would outearn her partner is primarily driven by norm induced misreporting in surveys. We draw on unique Swiss data combining survey and administrative information for the same individual and their partner. We demonstrate that individuals misreport incomes in surveys to comply with the male breadwinner norm. The male breadwinner norm does, however, not affect real labor market decisions around this margin. The resulting survey bias leads to a considerable overestimation of policy relevant measures like the gender wage gap.

Keywords: gender norms; female income shares; combination survey and administrative data; income misreporting; gender earnings gap (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D10 J01 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/213103/1/1688182020.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Gender Norms and Income Misreporting within Households (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:zewdip:20001

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