The inequality trade-off? Employment inequalities across and within couples in the rise of dual earning

This paper links the rise of dual earning in Europe with two associated phenomena, hitherto mostly studied separately: household employment polarisation, and part-time employment. The former is about inequality across heterosexual working-age couples, and their tendency to polarise between dual earning and dual workless. The latter shows that inequality persists within dual-earning couples, with women more likely than men to be in part-time work. The paper studies 11 European countries since 1983. It first documents long-run trends in dual earning, employment polarisation and part-time work. It then formally links the latter two notions, by developing a novel shift-share equation to explain the rise of dual-earning in terms of changes in levels of part-time and full-time work and changes in how equally or unequally they are distributed across couples. It shows that part-time employment increased the levels of employment without really changing the way employment is distributed across couples. On the other hand, full-time employment has become much more unequally distributed across couples over time, particularly following the 2008 crisis, a period during which the rise of female full-time work accelerated and male full-time work declined. The paper also identifies patterns of commonalities and differences across European countries. • Employment has become more unequally distributed across European couples. • Inequality in couple employment participation must study inequality within and across couples jointly. • A dual-full-time versus dual-part-time cleavage could be emerging. • The rise of dual earning has come with the rises in new forms of inequalities. • Three main patterns of inequality emerge across European countries.