published in: Review of Economics of the Household, 2022, 20, 1-13
We show that the descendants of ancient farmers may have an interest in marrying among themselves, and thus maintaining the gendered division of labour originally justified on comparative- advantage grounds by the advent of the plough even after they emigrate to a modern industrial economy where individual productivity depends on education rather than physical characteristics.
The result rests on the argument that, if an efficient domestic equilibrium requires the more productive spouse to specialize in raising income, and the less productive one in raising children irrespective of gender, this equilibrium will be implemented by a costlessly enforceable contract stipulating that the husband should do the former and the wife the latter, even if individual productivity reflects education rather than gender. Such a contract may not be needed if education and time spent with children give direct utility, because an efficient equilibrium may then be characterized by little or no division of labour.
We use cookies to provide you with an optimal website experience. This includes cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site as well as cookies that are only used for anonymous statistical purposes, for comfort settings or to display personalized content. You can decide for yourself which categories you want to allow. Please note that based on your settings, you may not be able to use all of the site's functions.
Cookie settings
These necessary cookies are required to activate the core functionality of the website. An opt-out from these technologies is not available.
In order to further improve our offer and our website, we collect anonymous data for statistics and analyses. With the help of these cookies we can, for example, determine the number of visitors and the effect of certain pages on our website and optimize our content.