Women as Breadwinners

A recent study looked at seven common explanations for why there seem to be more separations in heterosexual couples where the woman is the primary breadwinner.

There’s a bunch of data showing that there are more divorces in heterosexual marriages in which the woman makes more money than the man (separations are 36% more likely, in fact). And this study tested seven long-suspected explanations for this higher rate of breakups.

One of the most commonly cited explanations is that culture and gender norms favor male breadwinners, and that society will therefore punish couples in which the woman makes more money than the man in various ways, which strains the relationship.

It’s also been asserted that women with degrees increasingly face a marriage market in which there’s a shortage of similarly educated men, that women who have their own resources are just freer to leave not-great relationships than women who don’t have that kind of economic flexibility, or that women tend to ramp up their work schedule before an anticipated breakup (to ensure they can support themselves, post-separation), so there could be reverse-causation in the numbers: it looks like women making more money leads to divorces, but in reality the lead-up to a divorce nudges women to make more money so that they’re economically okay, post-split.