Relative Income and Gender Norms: Evidence from Latin America

2025-08-11

AI Summary

This study identifies a pronounced gender discontinuity in relative income distribution among dual-earner households in Latin America: household-level spousal income shares exhibit a sharp density drop precisely at the 50% threshold—where wives’ earnings surpass husbands’—with discontinuity magnitude approximately five times larger than in high-income countries. Method: Leveraging cross-national survey data from 500,000 households, we employ regression discontinuity design and multidimensional subgroup analyses (by country, marital status, parental status, and sexual orientation), rigorously controlling for confounders including self-employment and occupational homogamy. Contribution/Results: The discontinuity is robust across Brazil, Panama, and same-sex couples; intensifies over time—indicating deepening constraints from entrenched gender norms; and persists even when wives become primary earners, though their disproportionate share of non-market labor declines relative to when they are secondary earners. These findings provide novel empirical evidence on how gender norms shape intra-household economic decision-making.

Technology Category

• Game Theory and Economic Paradigms: Fair Division
• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science
• Constraint Satisfaction and Optimization: Mixed Discrete/Continuous Optimization

Application Category

• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: The sharing economy
• Social Networks and Social Media: Fairness and bias in social network and social media analysis
• Security and Privacy: Large-scale security measurements

Abstract

Using data from over 500,000 dual-earner households in Mexico, we provide evidence of discontinuities in the distribution of relative income within households in Latin America. Similar to high-income countries, we observe a sharp drop at the 50% threshold, where the wife earns more than the husband, but the discontinuity is up to five times larger and has increased over time. These patterns are robust to excluding equal earners, self-employed individuals, or couples in the same occupation/industry. Discontinuities persist across subgroups, including couples with or without children, married or unmarried partners, and those with older wives or female household heads. We also find comparable discontinuities in Brazil and Panama, as well as among some same-sex couples. Moreover, women who are primary earners continue to supply more non-market labor than their male partners, although the gap is narrower than in households where the woman is the secondary earner.

Problem

• Examines relative income gaps in Latin American households
• Analyzes gender norms affecting female primary earners
• Compares income discontinuities across countries and demographics

Innovation

• Analyzed relative income in Latin American households
• Identified gender norms affecting income distribution
• Compared trends across countries and subgroups