Abstract:
This paper examines whether and how the marital satisfaction of Japanese couples is related to the housework the spouse performs. For single-earner couples, both husbands and wives are more satisfied with the other spouse if the wife performs the greater share of the housework on weekdays. In dual-earner couples, both husbands and wives experience higher spousal satisfaction when the other spouse performs more housework on weekdays. Japanese dual-earner couples are unable to spend more time on housework, because wives are already performing a significant share of housework on weekdays while husbands are working long hours.
