Deciding Who Works Where - An Analysis of the Distribution of Work within Native and Immigrant Families in Australia

The paper examines whether there exists an asymmetry in the distribu- tion of market work and household production within families in Australia, and to what extent difierences in earnings capacities of spouses can account for the division of labor. Using a Blinder-Oaxaca Tobit-type decomposition, we flnd that the dif- ference in earnings capacities of Australian couples could explain around 30 and 20 percent of the observed disparities in spousal time allocation in market and domestic work, respectively. Most of the work gaps are accounted for by the difierences in labor supply behaviors of partners. We further observe that the difierences in wages are more relevant for immigrant families originating from non-English speaking countries. Convergence of gender wages would produce the greatest efiect to this particular subgroup in terms of re- ducing gender specialization. Given that immigrant women from non-English speak- ing background have high levels of formal qualiflcations, our results could assert the signiflcance of improving the returns to human capital attributes of these immigrant women in alleviating the asymmetry in work distribution.