Educational Difference Between Partners and Wife’s Happiness

Abstract

This paper uses the China Family Panel Studies to investigate the relationship between educational difference between partners and wife’s happiness. Employing some econometric models, this paper finds that the status of wife having more education than husband has a negative impact on wife’s happiness. To alleviate the endogeneity of educational difference, this paper uses an instrument variable approach to identify the causal relationship between them, and obtains conclusions consistent with the baseline regression. Heterogeneous analysis shows that for women who are less educated and subject to external traditional cultural norms, the negative happiness effect of wife having more education than husband is particularly significant. While greatly influenced by traditional cultural norms, these women are not only unwilling but also afraid to deviate from the role orientation of women in the existing social norms. Therefore, once women transcend the traditional norms to have more education than their husbands, their happiness will be reduced.