Many Western economies have seen a fall in the employment share of the traditionally male-dominated, manufacturing sector, while demand is increasing in female-dominated jobs. Still, men appear reluctant to enter these occupations. To understand persistent labor market segregation, I exploit within-school-across-cohort variation in the gender composition of the occupations of schoolmates' parents, and document that gender segregation is transmitted from one generation to the next. Boys who were exposed to gender-stereotypical male role models enter male-dominated occupations, while those socialized in cohorts with peers whose fathers worked alongside women enter occupations with more women. This effect goes beyond the influence of their father. In general, mothers' labor market behavior has negligible effects on boys. In contrast, girls are mainly influenced by female role models, and compared to boys the effects are much smaller. However, when a larger share of mothers work full-time, gender segregation decreases in the next generation.

One potential factor that contributes to the gender earnings gap is the joint taxation of spouses. However, quantifying the impact of joint taxation on earnings has been challenging due to the lack of exogenous variation and the simultaneous influence of traditional gender norms. To address these challenges, we exploit the introduction of joint taxation for same-sex couples in Germany in 2013. This allows us to analyze the entire population of same-sex couples who file taxes jointly using newly linked administrative income tax return data. To determine the effects of joint taxation, we employ a difference-in-differences approach using different-sex couples as the control group. Our findings reveal that same-sex secondary earners experience a significant decrease in earnings after filing taxes jointly, leading to a substantial widening of the partner pay gap. Primary earners also reduce their earnings, although not as substantial, suggesting that the income effect is stronger than the substitution effect for them.

The taxation of couples is a recurring theme in academic debate. In this paper, we explore whether political economy arguments can explain the persistence of joint taxation in Germany. We contrast two different methodologies to answer this question. First, we estimate recently developed sufficient statistics to determine the share of winners and losers from a reform towards individual taxation based on observed behavior, i.e., revealed preferences. Second, we ran a large scale survey experiment to elicit stated preferences and attitudes regarding the taxation of couples among a representative sample of the German population. Both methods consistently show that the tax treatment of couples in Germany is highly controversial. Relying on revealed preferences, the support for a reform towards individual taxation barely passes the majority threshold. According to stated preferences, support for such an elimination of income splitting is even lower, but varies strongly across household types and political party preferences.

Despite female advances in the labor market, it remains a quasi-universal norm that men spend more time on paid work, while women spend more time on housework and child-care. In this paper, we study the importance of the male breadwinner norm by recurring to a large administrative dataset for Germany. Specifically, we analyze whether a discontinuity at the point of equal incomes exists which is interpreted as couples’ avoidance of violating the male breadwinner norm. We stratify the sample in several ways to gain insights into the channels driving the discontinuity. Furthermore, we focus on the role of tax incentives’ on the intra-couple income distribution.