IDENTIFYING UNDERLYING DIMENSIONS IN SPOUSES EVALUATIONS OF FAIRNESS IN THE DIVISION OF HOUSEHOLD LABOR

Using the first wave of the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH-I), we analyze the joint distribution of wives' and husbands' a nswers regarding whether the division of household chores is ''fair.'' Responses comprise a 5-point scale, from ''very unfair to me'' to ''v ery unfair to her/him'' with ''fair to both'' as a middle category. It is well known that wives are more likely than husbands to report that the division of household labor is ''unfair to me,'' but this does no t begin to exploit the information contained in these paired (wife/hus band) data. Correlational measures suggest that agreement between wive s and husbands is low, but the absolute levels of agreement are high, since, in the majority of couples, both spouses say the situation is ' 'fair to both.'' The association is well captured by a restricted vers ion of the log-linear model for quasi-symmetry. This model suggests a two-dimensional latent trait model for the pattern of couple-specific responses. Additional analyses indicate that the NSFH-I ''fairness'' i tem is a convolution of responses along two dimensions-one reflecting ''relative fairness'' (e.g., fair to one spouse compared to the other' s contribution), the other a tendency on the part of many couples to r eport ''fair to both'' regardless of the ''true'' level of fairness be tween the wife and husband. This multidimensionality shows that there are difficulties in analyzing this item that have been hitherto unrema rked upon in the literature. We argue that the latent trait perspectiv e suggests that evaluations of equity need to be interpreted in terms of characteristics of couples, or marriages, not just in terms of the characteristics of wives and/or husbands. (C) 1998 Academic Press.