Gender identity and relative income within households: Evidence from Canada

Bertrand et al. (2015) show that, among married couples in the United States, the distribution of the share of the household income earned by the wife exhibits a sharp drop just to the right of 50%. They argue that this drop is consistent with a gender identity norm prescribing that a husband should earn more than his wife. We investigate this phenomenon in Canada at the national level but also across provinces. First, we document the presence of gender norms in Canada over the 1990–2014 period using three international data sets (the World Value Survey, the European Values Study and the International Social Survey Program). We find that Western Canada is relatively more traditional than Eastern Canada. Then, using the 2006 and 2016 census data, we show that a significant discontinuity at the 50% threshold exists in the distribution of the wife's relative income. This discontinuity is larger in Ontario and Western Canada than in Quebec and the Atlantic provinces.