Analyzes wives' labor force participation, wives' earnings, and the distribution of household income in eleven LIS countries and, for four countries, across time. The authors use the squared coefficient of variation to measure the mitigating effect of wives' earnings on inequality.

In the past twenty years, the labor force participation and earnings of women, especially married women, have risen dramatically. Over the same period, men's earnings have increased only modestly, and the distribution of family income has grown less equal. In this paper, we analyze the impact of...