Relative Income and Gender Norms: Evidence from Latin America
Using census data from over 500,000 dual-earner households in Mexico, we show that couples in which the wife earns just above half of the household income are far less common than those in which she earns just below that threshold a pattern that has been attributed to gender norms that create an aversion to wives outearning their husbands. This gap is two to five times larger than documented in the United States and Northern Europe and has grown over the 20002015 period.