Why do relationships fail when women earn more? Study challenges traditional explanations

Women who earn more than their male partners are still more likely to experience relationship breakdown, according to a study published in the Journal of Marriage and Family. However, the research challenges one of the most common explanations for this pattern, finding little evidence that traditional gender norms are responsible.

Over recent decades, women have increasingly surpassed men in education and, in many relationships, now earn more than their partners. Earlier studies have repeatedly shown that these couples are more likely to separate or divorce, leading researchers to suggest that traditional expectations about men being the main breadwinner may place extra strain on these relationships. Other explanations have focused on women’s financial independence, differences in earning potential, or the possibility that people seek partners with similar socioeconomic backgrounds.

The researchers wanted to determine which of these explanations, if any, best accounts for the higher rates of relationship dissolution observed when women have a socioeconomic advantage.

Led by Pilar Gonalons-Pons, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, the research team analyzed harmonized panel data from 544,911 different-sex couples across 29 high-income countries between 2004 and 2020. The study included 437,102 married couples and 107,809 cohabiting couples drawn from several large international household surveys.

Using statistical models, they examined whether women earning more than their partners predicted separation while testing several competing explanations, including gender norms, economic independence, labor market conditions, and work–family conflict.

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The researchers confirmed that couples in which women earned more than their partners were 36% more likely to separate. However, many of the explanations that have dominated previous research received little support. Countries with more traditional gender attitudes did not show a stronger association, suggesting that cultural beliefs about male breadwinners do not fully explain why these relationships end more often. Likewise, women’s greater financial independence, men’s relative economic advantage, and differences in opportunities to find similar partners failed to account for the pattern.

Instead, the strongest evidence pointed toward work–family conflict. The association between women’s higher earnings and relationship dissolution was noticeably stronger among couples raising children. Female-breadwinner couples with children were 49% more likely to separate than male-breadwinner couples, whereas childless female-breadwinner couples were 23% more likely to separate than their male-breadwinning counterparts.

This finding suggests that balancing work and family responsibilities may place greater strain on relationships when women have higher earnings, perhaps because household responsibilities remain unevenly shared. The study authors also found partial evidence that the association might be somewhat tied to anticipation of separation or economic hardship as confounders.

“Work–family conflict might be particularly intense when women do not scale back from paid work after having children and male partners do not sufficiently contribute to domestic labor,” the authors explained.

The researchers caution that the findings should not be interpreted as showing that women earning more causes relationships to fail. For example, the researchers point out that their dataset lacks information on relationship duration, an important variable as the risk of separation changes over the course of relationships. In addition, large international surveys cannot capture every aspect of relationship quality, communication, or compatibility. The study also focused only on high-income countries and different-sex couples, meaning the results may not apply elsewhere.

The study “Women’s Socioeconomic Advantage Over Their Partners and Relationship Dissolution: A 29-Country Study” was authored by Pilar Gonalons-Pons and Allison Dunatchik.