The emergence of women as main earners in Europe

Agnese Vitali, University of Southampton
Daria Mendola, Università degli Studi di Palermo

This paper conducts a cross-sectional empirical research aimed at documenting the emergence of a new family model characterized by women who earn the largest share of the household income. We show that in Europe, couples with women as the main earner have started to represent a non-negligible share of the population and identify characteristics of couples in which women are the main earner in comparison to couples in which men are the main earner and equal-earner couples. We undertake a comparative approach using micro-level surveys for 21 European countries from the European Social Survey.