Volume 41 - Article 15 | Pages 425–460  

Is the age difference between partners related to women's earnings?

By Angela Carollo, Anna Oksuzyan, Sven Drefahl, Carlo Giovanni Camarda, Linda Juel Ahrenfeldt, Kaare Christensen, Alyson van Raalte

Abstract

Background: Women earn less than men at most career stages. Explanations for a gender gap in wages include gender differences in the allocation of household and domestic work. At the family level, a marital age difference is an important shared characteristic that might play a role in determining a woman’s career trajectory, and, therefore, her income. Since women tend to marry older men, we investigate whether women whose husbands are older have lower incomes than women whose husbands are the same age or younger.

Objective: This study investigates whether the age gap between a woman and her partner was associated with her income in Denmark in 2010.

Methods: We use data on Danish female twin pairs in 2010. Our design includes samples within twin pairs (n = 4,716) and pooled twin samples (n = 13,354) to account for differences in early household environments and uses unconditional quantile regression to model the association between the age gap and the woman's income.

Results: We find a statistically significant association between the marital age gap and the woman's income. The form of this association appears to be complex and varies across the income and age gap distribution. However, the magnitude of the estimated effects is small in economic terms.

Conclusions: These results suggest that the marital age gap is unlikely to be an important determinant of a woman’s income, at least in Denmark.

Contribution: To our knowledge, this is the first study that explores the association between marital age differences and a woman's earnings using a twin design and high-quality register data.

Author’s Affiliation

• Angela Carollo - Max-Planck-Institut für Demografische Forschung, Germany EMAIL
• Anna Oksuzyan - Max-Planck-Institut für Demografische Forschung, Germany EMAIL
• Sven Drefahl - Stockholms Universitet, Sweden EMAIL
• Carlo Giovanni Camarda - Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED), France EMAIL
• Linda Juel Ahrenfeldt - Syddansk Universitet, Denmark EMAIL
• Kaare Christensen - Syddansk Universitet, Denmark EMAIL
• Alyson van Raalte - Max-Planck-Institut für Demografische Forschung, Germany EMAIL

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