The effect of spouses' relative education on household time allocation

Does spouses’ relative education explain their household’s distribution of labor? This paper analyzes the effect of educational attainment on time allocated to housework and paid work. To address endogeneity concerns, I implement a novel identification strategy by exploiting changes in spouses’ education relationship due to remarriage to identify its effects on their time allocation. I find that when an individual marries a spouse with higher relative education than their previous one, the individual’s share of housework time increases while their share of paid work time decreases. I also find that the spouse’s relative education reduces the probability of a stay-at-home spouse. The effects are stronger when a husband marries a more educated wife than his previous one. These findings show that relative human capital plays a role in household labor distribution and motivates a more gender-neutral division of labor within households.