Study: Working wives help marriages

State College, Pa. -- Marriages with wives who work outside the home are more likely to last than marriages with homemaker-only wives, a U.S. university study found.

The findings reflect a growing equity among couples when it comes to income, decision-making, parenting and housekeeping, Pennsylvania State University sociologist Stacy Rogers said.

Her findings -- detailed in the book "Alone Together: How Marriage in America Is Changing" -- go against a traditional belief that working wives increased divorce rates, McClatchy-Tribune Information Services reported.

Many economists insisted the traditional marriage of a breadwinner and a homemaker was more efficient and productive than two breadwinners, the news service said.

But Rogers' study of a nationally representative sample of 1,000 married couples from 1980 to 2000 found husbands appreciated their wives working and making more money -- and families adapted.

Breadwinner-homemaker marriages became "egalitarian marriages," Rogers and the study's other authors said.

With these marriages, husbands and wives share decision-making power more equally and housekeeping and childcare duties more equitably.

Grumbling about unfairness shifted accordingly, the study found.

Childless couples over the 20 years were generally happier than those with children, the study found.

The study's margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Copyright 2007 by United Press International.