Behind Every High Earning Man is a Conscientious Woman: The Impact of Spousal Personality on Earnings and Marriage

Susan L. Averett (), Cynthia Bansak and Julie Smith
Additional contact information
Susan L. Averett: Lafayette College and IZA

Journal of Family and Economic Issues, 2021, vol. 42, issue 1, No 3, 29-46

Abstract: Abstract Using three waves (2005, 2009 and 2013) of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey (HILDA), and linear regression and probit analyses, we examined the relationship between personality and own earnings, spousal earnings, and marriage. Specifically, we were interested in whether an individual’s personality traits re predictive of these three outcomes. As part of these analyses, we first established that adult personality was stable diminishing the probability of reverse causality. Our empirical results confirmed previous findings on the effect of own personality on own earnings. We then turned to the effect of spousal personality on earnings, the first study to examine this by gender. Regression estimates indicated that for men, having a conscientious wife was positively correlated with his earnings. There was some evidence that having an extraverted husband complement a woman’s earnings. These results highlight the importance of non-cognitive skills on earnings and emphasize the value of looking separately by gender. We also found that personality traits played an important factor in how people match in the marriage market, underscoring an important link between the marriage market and the labor market.

Keywords: Personality; Earnings; HILDA; Five factor model; Marriage; Assortative mating (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10834-020-09692-x Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:kap:jfamec:v:42:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1007_s10834-020-09692-x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... es/journal/10834/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10834-020-09692-x

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Family and Economic Issues is currently edited by Joyce Serido

More articles in Journal of Family and Economic Issues from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().