When a wife gets a job, her happiness goes way up—but unlike when a husband gets a job, it doesn't give her spouse any boost at all.
March 25, 2026
Original Paper
Household Preferences for Women's Employment: A Field Experiment in Bangladesh
SSRN · 6464878
The Takeaway
Traditional economic models assume that households pool their resources and share in each other's success, but this field experiment in Bangladesh found a total asymmetry in how labor benefits are distributed. Curiously, even though husbands did not personally benefit from the extra income or their wife’s happiness, seeing them work for just six weeks was enough to permanently end their opposition to women working.
From the abstract
This paper investigates household preferences over who should work and whether these preferences are malleable. We document that men and women prefer that husbands work over wives. To understand why, we randomly assign a six-week job to either the husband or wife and document asymmetry: women's work improves their own wellbeing but not their husbands', while men's work improves both partners' wellbeing. One year later, we surprise households with a work opportunity. Both women and men in househo