Gender inequality in housework beyond retirement: Persistence across UK breadwinning arrangements

Enlarge

Anna Zamberlan examines whether the transition into retirement changes the gendered division of housework in different-sex couples, and whether it makes a difference who was the main earner in the household before retirement.

The author draws on panel data from the British Household Panel Survey and the UK Household Longitudinal Study (1992–2025), covering 15,747 individuals, 50,237 observations, and 2,117 observed retirement transitions. Using so-called "dummy impact functions," the study examines how weekly housework time changes for up to five years following one's own retirement or that of one's partner.

The findings: both men and women increase their housework time after their own retirement. Men's weekly hours rise by about 2.24 hours in the retirement year (from roughly 5 to 8 hours), women's by about 2.73 hours (from roughly 14 to 16 hours). While the effect for men fades somewhat over the following years, it actually grows further for women.

The female share of housework drops by around 8 percentage points when the male partner retires, and rises by the same amount when the female partner retires, but in both cases it remains well above 50 percent (around 67% and just under 80%, respectively).

Breaking the results down by pre-retirement breadwinning arrangement (male breadwinner, equal earners, female breadwinner) also shows: in no arrangement does the female share approach parity. Contrary to economic expectations, male breadwinners do not increase their housework more than men in equal-earner households after retiring; their absolute housework involvement remains the lowest of all groups. For women, however, relative economic resources appear to shape adjustments more clearly: female breadwinners tend to show the largest increase (though only weakly significant), while women whose male partner was the breadwinner reduce their housework more markedly after his retirement than women in equal-earner households.

In female-breadwinner households, there are also signs of a partial return to more traditional role patterns: the economically dependent man increases his housework right after his own retirement, but falls below his pre-retirement level five years later, while the breadwinning woman does not significantly change her housework after her partner's retirement. Since these findings rest on the smallest subgroup in the data, they should be considered tentative.

The study's conclusion: retirement does not act as an equalizer in any earning arrangement. Across all household types, inequality in the division of housework persists; not because nothing changes, but because both partners adjust without this leading to an equal division.

The article is available here.