Are Increasing Earnings Associations Between Partners of Concern for Inequality? A Comparative Study of 21 Countries

Diederik Boertien () and Milan Bouchet-Valat ()

No 793, LIS Working papers from LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg

Abstract: This paper addresses the question to what extent the association between partners’ earnings matters for inequality between couples. First, we organize the existing literature to explain why studies come to a large variety of conclusions despite using, on occasions, the same data. Second, we use data from the Luxembourg Income Studies on 21 countries for a decomposition analysis based on log-linear models. We show that even though the correlation in earnings between partners increased in most countries, this only amplified inequality on some occasions. In most countries, increases in the earnings correlation are driven by general changes in employment rates. Given that these increases in employment equalized earnings across households through other pathways, the inherently connected increases in the earnings correlation are of less concern from an inequality perspective.

Pages: 53 pages
Date: 2020-05
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in Social Forces 101, no. 2, (2022): 639–664. https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soab158

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.lisdatacenter.org/wps/liswps/793.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:lis:liswps:793

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LIS Working papers from LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Piotr Paradowski ().