Via
Yahoo!News Reuters Wire, where I found it on their "Most Popular" stories section:
Married men earn more than bachelors so long as their wives stay at home doing the housework, according to a report Wednesday from Britain's Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER).
More...
Academics Elena Bardasi and Mark Taylor found that a married man whose wife does not go out to work but is primarily responsible for the cooking and cleaning earns about 3 percent more than comparably employed single men.
But that wage premium disappears if wives go out to work themselves or don't do most of the housework.
Lovely, no?
So who is this Institute for Social and Economic Research?
ISER is a department of the University of Essex and is core-funded by the University and the UK's Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). ISER also carries out research for other agencies, including UK and other national government departments, the EU and commercial organisations.
(Source:
Their Webpage)
So this appears a government funded research program in Britian. With research of the utmost importance as how much married men make. Most research bias comes into play when deciding what subjects to study. It's pretty clear to me that a conservative bias came into this study when they formulated the study.
Why research how much married men make and compare it to if their wives "do the chores?" Apparently they wanted to see why married men might make more than single men. I don't think the three percent income gap between married men and single men is quite as imporant as another wage gap I can think of...