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Impact of the Intra-household Education Gap on Wives’ and Husbands’ Well-Being: Evidence from Cross-Country Microdata

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Abstract

Using original cross-sectional Internet survey data from 32 countries in six continents, we investigate the effect of intra-household education gap on the well-being of wives and husbands. According to the results, both wives and husbands with larger intra-household education gaps report a lower probability of life satisfaction. In particular, subjective well-being is worse for a wife or husband with longer years of schooling than their partner, compared to other groups (i.e., a couple with an equal level of education or wife or husband with a lower education level than her or his partner). The impact of intra-household education gap on well-being is greater for both wives and husbands in Asian and non-high-income countries, and only wives in Western and high-income countries. It is greater for the well-educated group than for the less-educated group for both wives and husbands. Individual income remains a satisfactory channel for both wives and husbands, while the impact of the family satisfaction channel is only confirmed for wives.

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Data Avalability

The data is available upon reasonable requirement.

Notes

  1. In this study, the indices of intra-household education gap are (1) actual educational difference and (2) absolute educational difference. For the detailed definitions of these two indices, please refer to Sect. 3.

  2. Most previous studies support the absolute hypothesis in developed countries, including Japan (Easterlin 2001; Ferrer-i-Carbonell 2005; Ma and Piao 2019; Vendrik and Woltjer 2007), and developing countries (Ma 2016; Wang and VanderWeele 2011).

  3. The relative income hypothesis is supported for developed countries (Ferrer-i-Carbonell 2005; Ma and Piao 2019; Vendrik and Woltjer 2007) and developing countries (Brockmann et al. 2009; Ma 2016; Wang and VanderWeele 2011).

  4. For the detailed information of samples, country names, continents, and survey years, please refer Appendix Table 7.

  5. Never attended school is scored as 0, dropped out of primary school as 3, completed primary school as 6, completed junior high school as 9, completed high school as 12, completed vocational school as 14, completed junior college as 15, completed university/college education as 16, completed graduate school (master’s degree) as 18, and completed graduate school (doctorate degree) as 23.

  6. The results using the educational attainment gap are available upon request.

  7. The equivalent scale is the square root of the number of family members.

  8. The exchange rate is applied on January 7th 2021.

  9. For the robustness checks, the different model results are summarized in the Appendix, Table 8. These results are consistent with those in Table 2.

  10. The robustness results are obtained by additionally controlling for the partner occupation dummy variables.

  11. As a robustness check, the education evaluation of educational attainment levels between 1 (never attend school) to 10 (doctor) are also used, and the conclusions are confirmed once more.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP20H00648; This research was supported by the 4th Environmental Economics Research Fund of the Ministry of the Environment, Japan. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the agencies. We thank the editor and the reviewers for your thoughtful suggestions and insights.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Urban Institute & Department of Civil Engineering, Kyushu University, 744 Motooka Nishi-ku, Fukuoka, 819-0395, Japan

    Xiangdan Piao & Shunsuke Managi

  2. Faculty of Economics, Hosei University, 4342 Machita-shi Aiharamachi, Tokyo, 194-0298, Japan

    Xinxin Ma

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  1. Xiangdan Piao
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Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 6, 7 and 8.

Table 6 Definitions of indices of subjective well-being and intra-hosuehold education gap
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Table 7 Country list
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Table 8 Results of robustness checks.
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Piao, X., Ma, X. & Managi, S. Impact of the Intra-household Education Gap on Wives’ and Husbands’ Well-Being: Evidence from Cross-Country Microdata. Soc Indic Res 156, 111–136 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-021-02651-5

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