… But the evidence suggests that while men tend to applaud their spouses when they help to bring home the bacon, husbands aren’t always as enthusiastic when women start bringing home the filet mignon. And it’s especially troubling that these old-fashioned social norms about gender identity appear to be adversely affecting family formation and stability.
This is the finding of an interesting new paper by Marianne Bertrand, Emir Kamenica and Jessica Pan, three economists who are colleagues of mine at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. They found that traditional views of gender identity, particularly the view that the right and proper role of the husband is to make more money than the wife, are affecting choices of whom to marry, how much to work, and even whether to stay married. [cont.]
Richard H. Thaler (U. of Chicago), New York Times