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dc.titleRelative Income and Gender Norms: Evidence from Latin America
dc.contributor.authorMuñoz, Ercio
dc.contributor.authorSansone, Dario
dc.contributor.authorTampellini Silva, Joao Pedro
dc.contributor.orgunitGender and Diversity Division
dc.coverageLatin America
dc.date.available2026-03-18T00:03:00
dc.date.issue2026-03-18T00:03:00
dc.description.abstractUsing census data from over 500,000 dual-earner households in Mexico, we show that couples in which the wife earns just above half of the household income are far less common than those in which she earns just below that threshold a pattern that has been attributed to gender norms that create an aversion to wives outearning their husbands. This gap is two to five times larger than documented in the United States and Northern Europe and has grown over the 20002015 period. Unlike findings for the United States and Northern Europe, the discontinuity is not driven by equal earners, self-employed workers, or co-working couples, and persists across married and cohabiting couples, households with and without children, female-headed households, and couples where the wife is the older partner. Extending the analysis to Brazil and Panama, we find comparable patterns, establishing this as a regional rather than country-specific phenomenon. Among female same-sex couples in Mexico, we detect a similar discontinuity, whereas no consistent pattern emerges for male same-sex couples. Even when women are the primary earners, they continue to supply substantially more nonmarket labor than their male partners on average 36 more weekly hours and convergence in household production slows as the wife's income share rises further above the threshold.
dc.format.extent85
dc.identifier.doihttp://dx.doi.org/10.18235/0013989
dc.identifier.urlhttps://publications.iadb.org/publications/english/document/Relative-Income-and-Gender-Norms-Evidence-from-Latin-America.pdf
dc.language.isoen
dc.publisherInter-American Development Bank
dc.subjectWomen
dc.subjectChildren
dc.subjectCensus
dc.subjectIncome Distribution
dc.subjectFemale Labor Force
dc.subjectWage Discrimination
dc.subjectGender Equality and Women's Empowerment
dc.subjectGender Wage Gap
dc.subjectGender Mainstreaming
dc.subject.jelcodeD13 - Household Production and Intrahousehold Allocation
dc.subject.jelcodeD91 - Intertemporal Household Choice • Life Cycle Models and Saving
dc.subject.jelcodeJ12 - Marriage • Marital Dissolution • Family Structure • Domestic Abuse
dc.subject.jelcodeJ15 - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants • Non-labor Discrimination
dc.subject.jelcodeJ16 - Economics of Gender • Non-labor Discrimination
dc.subject.jelcodeO15 - Human Resources • Human Development • Income Distribution • Migration
dc.subject.jelcodeZ13 - Economic Sociology • Economic Anthropology • Social and Economic Stratification
dc.subject.keywordsParticipación laboral femenidad;Parejas del mismo sexo;uso del tiempo
dc.typeWorking Papers
idb.identifier.pubnumberIDB-WP-01811
idb.operationRG-E2016
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