Does the Pandemic Affect Inequality Within Families?: The Case of Dual-Earner Couples in Israel.

This article exploits the unique consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak to examine whether time constraints drive the unequal division of unpaid labor between dual-earner couples in Israel. Using the first wave of longitudinal household data that was collected in Israel since the outbreak of the pandemic, we focused on 325 dual-earner couples who stayed employed during the first lockdown. By employing OLS regressions, we examined the association between changes in employment hours and changes in unpaid labor for partnered men and women. Strong evidence was found for a gendered translation of the time constraints mechanism: A decrease in hours of paid work is related to an increase in hours of care for children among men and women, but time devoted to housework increased only among women. We conclude that time constraints that resulted from the dramatic effect of the first lockdown on paid and unpaid work in Israel did not significantly change the gender division of unpaid housework but did change the distribution of childcare. The theoretical implications of this conclusion for future research are discussed.

Family matters: The contribution of households' educational and employment composition to income inequality.

The rise in inequality in most industrial countries has drawn attention to the social and economic processes underlying it. This study examines how changing educational attainment and employment patterns of women (mainly) are impacting households' income distribution, with Israel as a case study. The level of income inequality in Israel, which is one of the highest in the Western world, has risen significantly in recent decades, along with a rise in education and labor force participation, especially among women. Using counterfactual analysis of the Theil index between the years 1983 and 2008, our findings show that the share of highly educated households has soared, together with a rise in the share of fulltime dual-earner households. There has also been an increase in the share of doubly fortunate households: both highly educated and fulltime dual-earner. All these changes have contributed to the rise in income inequality. The study emphasizes the importance of the joint change in educational attainment and participation level as an important mechanism behind the rise in income inequality.