Determinants of Wife's Satisfaction With Husband's Job

Lee, Yongja Kim

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Description

Title

Determinants of Wife's Satisfaction With Husband's Job

Author(s)

Lee, Yongja Kim

Issue Date

1980

Department of Study

Human Resources and Family Studies

Discipline

Human Resources and Family Studies

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

Home Economics

Language

eng

Abstract

• The objectives of this study were (1) to determine the factors influencing wife's satisfaction with husband's job, (2) to determine the relative importance of the factors in explaining wife's satisfaction with the husband's job, and (3) to determine the relative importance of the socioeconomic and social-psychological predetermined variables and the jointly-dependent variables, wife's perception of economic adequacy and wife's satisfaction with married life.
• Data for this study are taken from the Quality of Life Survey conducted in 1976-77 at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. The sample of 238 families in the 1976-77 Survey was the second interview of "typical" families that were in the 1970-71 Survey of Life Styles of Families. The original sample of the "typical" families was a stratified random sample based on the head's occupation. Households were eligible for inclusion in the original survey if they had a mother or mother-substitute under 65 years of age and at least one child under 18. Student households were excluded. Of 238 interviewed, only 227 families in which husband had a job the previous year are used for this study.
• Since an assumption of the interdependency of three variables, wife's satisfaction with husband's job, wife's perception of economic adequacy, and wife's satisfaction with married life, was made, two-stage least-squares (2SLS) was used to estimate the parameters of the simultaneous-equations. For validation, the total sample was divided into four analysis samples (ABC, ABD, ACD, and BCD), plus their corresponding validation samples (D, C, B, A, respectively), using a jackknife validation procedure. For the analysis of each set of samples, three subsequent models were developed: initial, adjusted, and refined.
• The results of the adjusted model on each analysis sample showed that three of the models (ABC, ABD, and BCD) seemed to be recursive and one model (ACD) appeared to be non-recursive. Therefore, ordinary least-squares was used for three models and 2SLS was used for one model. The final model was built to combine all four models. The model was recursive.
• The findings from the final model on the total sample are summarized. Four independent variables were significantly related (.10 level) to wife's satisfaction with the husband's job. The higher the husband's earnings, the more satisfied his wife is with his job. If a wife feels that her husband is over-employed or under-employed for his job, she is less satisfied with the husband's job. The more positively a wife perceives her economic adequacy and the more satisfied a wife is with married life, the more satisfied she is with the husband's job. The wife's satisfaction with married life was the most important variable in explaining wife's satisfaction with husband's job, with wife's perception of economic adequacy second in importance, husband's earnings before taxes third in importance and wife's feeling that her husband is over-trained or under-employed the least important.

Graduation Semester

1980

Type of Resource

text

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