【英语语言学习】妻子比丈夫挣得还多

Time for some number crunching¹ from our data expert, Mona Chalabi, from fivethirtyeight.com. And she has given us this number of the week.

AUTOMATED² VOICE: Thirty-eight.

MARTIN: That is the percentage of American wives who earn more than their husbands. Mona Chalabi joins us from our studios in New York. Hey, Mona.

MONA CHALABI: Hi, Rachel.

MARTIN: OK, so 38 percent - what does that mean? Who are these people? Are they working couples, both people employed?

CHALABI: No, actually, in 1 in 3 of those cases, the woman's only earning more because her husband isn't earning anything at all. So if you only look at marriages where both spouses³ are working, then actually, you find that only 29 percent of women out-earn their husbands. But the number has gone up over time. So in 1987, only 18 percent of women were breadwinners in marriages where both partners were working. Although, I should point out, we're only talking about heterosexual, married couples here. Unfortunately, there just isn't data on same-sex or unmarried couples.

MARTIN: OK. So what effect does this have on these marriages?

CHALABI: Well, there's some research. So in 2013, the University of Chicago Booth School of Business published a paper that looked at 4,000 married couples in America. It found that once a woman started to earn more than her husband, divorce rates increased. Surprisingly, though, this data showed that whether the wife earns a little bit more or a lot more doesn't actually make much of a difference. So the researchers concluded from that that what really matters is the mere⁴ fact of a woman earning more.

MARTIN: Ok, so this seems crazy to me. I mean, (laughter) you're saying that when women earn more in a marriage, that's a reason that couples become unhappy, and they get divorced?

CHALABI: I mean, there seems to be a correlation⁵, right? So the researchers are kind of looking for theories that can explain that middle bit to see if there really is a causation thing here. So everyone knows, on average, - or at least I think most people know - that American women spend more time on housework than men, about 44 minutes more every day. But here's the weird⁶ thing. The researchers found that the gap in housework got even larger when the woman was the primary earner.

MARTIN: So wait. So if the woman is earning a lot more money, or just more money, she's doing even more housework?

CHALABI: The gap between how much she's doing versus⁷ how much the man is doing is even bigger.

MARTIN: Why?

CHALABI: (Laughter). So they kind of turned from data to theory, like sociological theory here. They think that the explanation for that extra housework is that a high-earning woman is trying to make sure that her husband doesn't feel threatened. The idea is basically that men might feel a bit emasculated by a woman that earns more than them.

MARTIN: And so women do more housework to make up for that?

CHALABI: Yeah. But, I mean, I'm kind of reluctant to make the same leap here because they didn't actually ask the men whether or not they feel threatened. But they looked at the data on women's incomes relative to their husbands. And they said, and I'll quote here, "a threatening wife takes on a greater share of housework so as to assuage⁸ the husband's unease with the situation," unquote. But there's something else that's really weird here too. There's other research that suggests that when a woman out-earns her partner, it affects fidelity⁹.

MARTIN: Really?

CHALABI: Yeah (laughter).

MARTIN: OK, tell me more.

CHALABI: There's a study from Cornell University that looks at data on young American couples. And actually, the good thing about this bit of research is that it included married and unmarried couples.

MARTIN: OK.

CHALABI: But the findings are pretty depressing. So the author found that a man is more likely to cheat on his partner if he is more financially dependent on her. And men who are completely dependent on their girlfriends or wives are five times more likely to cheat than men who earn the same amount as their partners. And the explanation given here was basically the same as the housework thing. So it's basically about kind of men feeling like they need to conform to society's definitions of masculinity.

MARTIN: OK, so it seems like a lot of these theories are focusing in on men's behavior...

CHALABI: Yeah.

MARTIN: When the wives are the breadwinners. But what about the women - is there any research about how women might behave differently in this dynamic?

CHALABI: Yeah. So we know that earning more than your partner might be kind of stressful for a woman. So in 2013, researchers from Washington University in St. Louis studied data from 200,000 married couples in Denmark. And they found that when women were earning more than their husbands, they were more likely to use anti-anxiety medications and also more likely to suffer from insomnia¹⁰.

MARTIN: OK. So you've got this data talking about money and fidelity and specifically how it affects heterosexual marriages when the wife earns more than the husband. You know, does the data project out towards the future, how families are going to adapt to this? What is a new reality in the labor¹¹ market?

CHALABI: I mean, not really. And one of the problems is that not only does the data not project out, but it kind of doesn't look backwards¹² enough, right? So we don't know whether some of these couples were kind of unhappy from the start, right? Maybe a high-earning woman is more likely to divorce simply because she can because she has the financial independence to kind of walk away. So there's a lot of gaps, basically, in this information. But I think what the research does kind of point to is that economic realities are moving faster than societal norms. And by that, I'm not saying that, like, there's economic equality for man and women. That's just blatantly¹³ not the case. But it does look like progress is happening there faster than traditional gender¹⁴ norms seem to be changing.

MARTIN: That was Mona Chalabi, and you're listening to WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News.

1 crunching   

v.嘎吱嘎吱地咬嚼( crunch的现在分词 )；嘎吱作响；（快速大量地）处理信息；数字捣弄

参考例句：

• The horses were crunching their straw at their manger. 这些马在嘎吱嘎吱地吃槽里的草。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The dog was crunching a bone. 狗正嘎吱嘎吱地嚼骨头。 来自《简明英汉词典》

2 automated   

a.自动化的

参考例句：

• The entire manufacturing process has been automated. 整个生产过程已自动化。
• Automated Highway System (AHS) is recently regarded as one subsystem of Intelligent Transport System (ITS). 近年来自动公路系统(Automated Highway System,AHS)，作为智能运输系统的子系统之一越来越受到重视。

3 spouses   

n.配偶，夫或妻( spouse的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Jobs are available for spouses on campus and in the community. 校园里和社区里有配偶可做的工作。 来自辞典例句
• An astonishing number of spouses-most particularly in the upper-income brackets-have no close notion of their husbands'paychecks. 相当大一部分妇女——特别在高收入阶层——并不很了解他们丈夫的薪金。 来自辞典例句

4 mere   

adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过

参考例句：

• That is a mere repetition of what you said before.那不过是重复了你以前讲的话。
• It's a mere waste of time waiting any longer.再等下去纯粹是浪费时间。

5 correlation   

n.相互关系，相关，关连

参考例句：

• The second group of measurements had a high correlation with the first.第二组测量数据与第一组高度相关。
• A high correlation exists in America between education and economic position.教育和经济地位在美国有极密切的关系。

6 weird   

adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的

参考例句：

• From his weird behaviour,he seems a bit of an oddity.从他不寻常的行为看来，他好像有点怪。
• His weird clothes really gas me.他的怪衣裳简直笑死人。

7 versus   

prep.以…为对手，对；与…相比之下

参考例句：

• The big match tonight is England versus Spain.今晚的大赛是英格兰对西班牙。
• The most exciting game was Harvard versus Yale.最富紧张刺激的球赛是哈佛队对耶鲁队。

8 assuage   

v.缓和，减轻，镇定

参考例句：

• The medicine is used to assuage pain.这种药用来止痛。
• Your messages of cheer should assuage her suffering.你带来的这些振奋人心的消息一定能减轻她的痛苦。

9 fidelity   

n.忠诚，忠实；精确

参考例句：

• There is nothing like a dog's fidelity.没有什么能比得上狗的忠诚。
• His fidelity and industry brought him speedy promotion.他的尽职及勤奋使他很快地得到晋升。

10 insomnia   

n.失眠，失眠症

参考例句：

• Worries and tenseness can lead to insomnia.忧虑和紧张会导致失眠。
• He is suffering from insomnia.他患失眠症。

11 labor   

n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦

参考例句：

• We are never late in satisfying him for his labor.我们从不延误付给他劳动报酬。
• He was completely spent after two weeks of hard labor.艰苦劳动两周后，他已经疲惫不堪了。

12 backwards   

adv.往回地，向原处，倒，相反，前后倒置地

参考例句：

• He turned on the light and began to pace backwards and forwards.他打开电灯并开始走来走去。
• All the girls fell over backwards to get the party ready.姑娘们迫不及待地为聚会做准备。

13 blatantly   

ad.公开地

参考例句：

• Safety guidelines had been blatantly ignored. 安全规章被公然置之不顾。
• They walked grandly through the lobby, blatantly arm in arm, pretending they were not defeated. 他们大大方方地穿过门厅，故意炫耀地挎着胳膊，假装他们没有被打败。

14 gender   

n.（生理上的）性，（名词、代词等的）性

参考例句：

• French differs from English in having gender for all nouns.法语不同于英语，所有的名词都有性。
• Women are sometimes denied opportunities solely because of their gender.妇女有时仅仅因为性别而无法获得种种机会。