Separate Spheres: The Gender Division of Labor in the Financial Elite.

This article examines how gendered divisions of paid and unpaid labor differ among economically elite couples in the United States, using data from the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) spanning 1989 to 2019. It finds that couples in the top one percent by income or wealth—the "super-rich"—are significantly more likely than other income groups, including the rich (90th–99th percentile) and upper-middle class (80th–89th percentile), to maintain traditional male breadwinner–female homemaker arrangements, a pattern that has remained stable over three decades. The study highlights that wealth, more than income, strongly predicts these traditional divisions of labor, suggesting that wealth ownership plays a critical role in sustaining gender inequality within elite households. Additionally, the persistence of these arrangements among the super-rich contrasts with more dual-earner patterns in lower elite and non-elite groups, underscoring the intersection of class and gender inequality in the reproduction of economic advantage.