Negotiating “Wifely Duties”: Fertility, Housework, Income, and Marital Satisfaction in Taiwan

• In Event: 30203 - Demography and Inequality in East Asia

Abstract

This study aims to analyze the relationship among income, housework, marital satisfaction, and fertility behaviors in Taiwan, a society with an industrialized economy and traditional gender role differentiation. Using six waves of longitudinal data from Taiwan’s Panel Study of Family Dynamics, 2011-2020 (N = 742 and N = 3,628 person-year observations), we used latent class analysis to classify marriages into four types and applied both Poisson regression and logistic event history analysis to examine the relationship between household type, income, housework, family life satisfaction, and fertility behaviors. Results are consistent with the modified exchange theory that gendered resources are associated with fertility behaviors. Higher share of income for husbands results in more fertility and higher share of housework for wives (among egalitarian marriages) is linked to less fertility. Women in traditional male breadwinner households are more likely to experience fertility at all parities. Egalitarian marriages with more equal share in income and housework do not have higher fertility, indicating lack of support for the gender equity theory. Wives more satisfied with family life are no more likely to have more babies, again contrary to the family systems theory. These findings illustrate the profound and resilient impact of gender role differentiation on Taiwanese families. The study extends and enriches our knowledge about the nature and pace of the global spread of the Second Demographic Transition in an era of rising awareness of gender inequalities in the second half of the gender revolution.

Authors

• Christine (Shiuan) Pan, University of California-Davis

• Xiaoling Shu, University of California-Davis