Political economy of family life: couple's earnings, welfare regime and union dissolution

Amit Kaplan*, Haya Stier

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

5 Scopus citations

Abstract

This study examines how institutional settings moderate the relation of couples’ relative and absolute earnings to the likelihood of union dissolution. Based on ECHP data, it covers 12 countries in four welfare regimes. The relationship between a couple's economic dependence and the likelihood of union dissolution were found to differ across regimes. With regard to relative earnings, equality in earnings lowered the risk of separation only in regimes characterized by a high degree of defamilialization, through either the state or the market. As for absolute earnings, women's and men's earnings were significantly related to the risk of union dissolution only in regimes where state defamilialization is low.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)43-56
Number of pages14
JournalSocial Science Research
Volume61
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Jan 2017

Funding

FundersFunder number
Institute of Food Technologists27/44
Israel Science Foundation1005/06

    Keywords

    • Couple relations
    • Earning dependency
    • Economic independence
    • Relative earnings
    • Union dissolution
    • Welfare regime

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