Twenty-nine percent of American wives in dual-income marriages earn more than their husbands each year, according to 2016 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But many married Americans are not willing to admit their true earnings -- but only when wives earn more than their husbands.
When wives earn more, both spouses inflate the husband’s income and underreport the wife’s income, according to new research from the Census Bureau. These responses are seemingly the result of societal influence and could impact the quality of self-reported data in the future, the report said.
When a wife earns more, both husbands and wives exaggerate the husband’s earnings and diminish the wife’s earnings, the report noted. Researchers found husbands report earnings that are an average 2.9 percentage points higher when they respond to surveys compared to what’s in their tax filings. The earnings of women in such households are underreported by an average 1.5 percent, the report added.
The Census Bureau has been working to improve the accuracy of self-reported earnings by comparing survey responses to data from other sources, including employers and the IRS. “Wage and earnings data underlie a majority of federal statistics on income, inequality and poverty, and are critical for understanding the pulse of the nation and overall well-being of individuals in society,” said Bruce Meyer, economist at the Census Bureau and McCormick Foundation Professor at the University of Chicago Harris Public Policy School.
Misrepresentation of earnings on Census Bureau surveys can skew national statistics and impact the understanding of income, inequality and poverty. In this sample, roughly one in four couples (22.9 percent) are in what the study classifies as “nontraditional marriages,” where the wife earns more than the husband.
As the number of wives earning more than their husbands continues to grow, self-reported earnings data could become less reliable due to heavy social influence.
These norms can heavily influence the expectations and behavior of respondents. For example, the social expectation that husbands should earn more than their wives may have been a factor in how married couples reported their earnings, the study found.
“We made a critical finding that adds to the understanding of gender norms and the quality of income statistics, in particular wage gaps among different-sex married couples,” said Marta Murray-Close, economist at the Census Bureau and coauthor of the study.