Time: 2023/02/27 (Mon.), 13:30 – 15:00 (Beijing Time)

Title:  Is women's competitiveness expressed vicariously through their husband's income?

Venue: Zhonghui Building 106

About the speaker:

David Ong is a professor of economics at Jinan University-University of Birmingham Joint Institute, Guangzhou. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis. His research focuses on experimental and behavioural economics, particularly gender differences in competitiveness and marriage matching. He also has worked on the labor market beauty premium, co-author matching, price dispersion, and choice overload. He has published in the Journal of Development Economics, European Economic Review, Journal of Economic Behavior, and Organization, and Economics Letters.

Abstract:

Prior research on the contribution of competitiveness on the gender income gap has focused on the effect of individual competitiveness. We investigate the influence of heterosexual individuals’ own and cohabiting partner’s competitiveness on their own and partner's income using a recently validated self-reported measure of competitiveness incorporated in 2017 into a Dutch representative survey. The present (2017) and future (after 2017) income levels of single and cohabiting women and cohabiting men are positively associated with their own competitiveness. Single men’s are not. Consistent with competitive women selecting high income men, women’s competitiveness is positively associated with their male partner’s income, but the men’s competitiveness is not significantly associated with their female partner’s income. However, controlling for 2017 income as a proxy for unobserved factors that might affect income, only single men’s competitiveness increases their future income. Single women’s and cohabiting men’s and women’s do not. Remarkably, only men’s female partner’s competitiveness, not their own, causally increases the men’s future income. Inconsistent with household specialization as the channel, women’s competitiveness does not increase their partner’s work hours. Neither cohabiting women’s own nor their partner’s competitiveness increase the women’s income. In short, our evidence suggests that whereas men’s competitiveness increases their income only as singles, women’s competitiveness never increases their income. However, they do match with higher potential income men as spouses and motivate these men to earn a higher income, increasing the income of their household.