Sexual orientation and intra-household specialization before and after the legal recognition of same-sex marriage in Canada

Using the Canadians Censuses of 2001, 2006, 2016, and the National Household Survey of 2011, this article compares intra-household specialization patterns of married and cohabiting couples by gender composition of households. Household specialization is operationalized in several ways. The first set of measures captures the earnings differentials between spouses, while the second set of measures relies on labour supply. In line with previous studies, we often find a lower level of intra-household specialization for both male-male and female-female couples, compared with their heterosexual counterparts. However, the difference with heterosexuals is much larger for female-female couples. When the most recent dataset is split by income level, it appears that the specialization gaps are largely driven by the more affluent households. We also find considerable heterogeneity in the patterns when the sample is split by generational status.