The growing economic similarity of spouses has contributed to rising income inequality across households. Explanations have typically centered on assortative mating, but recent work has argued that changes in women's employment and spouses' division of paid work have played a more important role. We expand this work to consider the critical turning point of parenthood in shaping couples' division of employment and earnings. Drawing on three U.S. nationally representative surveys, we examine the role of parenthood in spouses' earnings correlations between 1968 and 2015. We examine the extent to which changes in spouses' earnings correlations are due to (1) changes upon entry into marriage (assortative mating), (2) changes between marriage and parenthood, (3) changes following parenthood, and (4) changes in women's employment. Our findings show that increases in the correlation between spouses' earnings prior to 1990 came largely from changes between marriage and first birth, but increases after 1990 came almost entirely from changes following parenthood. In both instances, changes in women's employment are key to increasing earnings correlations. Changes in assortative mating played little role in either period. An assessment of the aggregate-level implications points to the growing significance of earnings similarity after parenthood for rising income inequality across families.

中文翻译：

---

生育后夫妻收入的变化以及家庭收入不平等的趋势。


配偶之间日益增长的经济相似性加剧了家庭之间的收入不平等。解释通常集中在选型择偶上，但最近的研究表明，女性就业和配偶有偿工作分工的变​​化发挥了更重要的作用。我们扩展了这项工作，以考虑为人父母在塑造夫妻就业和收入分配方面的关键转折点。我们利用三项具有美国全国代表性的调查，研究了 1968 年至 2015 年间父母身份在配偶收入相关性中的作用。我们研究了配偶收入相关性变化在多大程度上归因于 (1) 结婚后的变化（选型择偶） ），(2) 婚姻和生育之间的变化，(3) 生育后的变化，以及 (4) 妇女就业的变化。我们的研究结果表明，1990 年之前配偶收入之间相关性的增加主要来自结婚和生育第一胎之间的变化，但 1990 年之后的增加几乎完全来自为人父母后的变化。在这两种情况下，女性就业的变化都是提高收入相关性的关键。选型交配的变化在这两个时期都没有发挥什么作用。对总体影响的评估表明，生育后的收入相似性对于家庭收入不平等的加剧越来越重要。