The economic costs of men's long work hours on women - Evidence on the gender wage income disparity from Australian and German longitudinal data

Women's earnings inequality persists, despite policy efforts to reduce discrimination and gender bias. Gender gaps in earnings, however, are a function of hours worked as well as wage rates, and reflect gendered short and long work hour patterns. Within households, how partners exchange time is a crucial driver of hours worked yet this is rarely incorporated into analysis of gender earning gaps. Using a two-stage instrumental variable Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition we model earnings gaps as a function of own and partner hours on and off the job. This enables us to estimate what the gender gap in hours and earnings would look like without a gendered time ‘subsidy’ or ‘borrowing’ in the home. We studied dual-earner households in two countries, Australia and Germany, finding a weekly earnings gap of AUD$536 and €400. This was accompanied by a weekly work hour gap of 12 hours in Australia and 13 in Germany. When we accounted for the influence of partner’s hours (paid or unpaid), work hour gaps reduce to 5.1 hours in Australian households (58% reduction), and to 6.9 hours in German (47% reduction). In effect, women would work 3 to 4 hours more each week, and men’s long hours would reduce, narrowing the gender earnings gaps by 43% in Australia and 25% in Germany, if time ‘subsidies’ in the home were eliminated. Our analysis reveals the economic cost to women long work hour cultures impose. JEL codes: J16, J21, J22, J31