Jepsen, ChristopherChristopherJepsenJepsen, Lisa K.Lisa K.Jepsen2013-07-182013-07-182006Eastern Economic Journalhttp://hdl.handle.net/10197/4448Becker’s theories of labor-market specialization predict that couples will allocate the time of the man mainly to the labor market and the time of the woman mainly to the home market. Previous studies fail to find evidence to support this allocation of labor. We compare cohabiting couples to roommates to study the extent to which couples specialize. Roommates make an interesting comparison group. Like couples, they live together. Unlike couples, they have no incentives to specialize with respect to labor-market traits. We include same-sex couples in our study because by definition, they are unable to specialize by gender. Couples, however, have incentives to pool household resources and to specialize. We find evidence consistent with the hypothesis that, with respect to earnings, couples specialize and roommates do not. With respect to hours worked, however, same-sex couples are indistinguishable from male and female roommates.enThis is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Eastern Economic Journal. The definitive publisher-authenticated version Eastern Economic Journal Spring2006, Vol. 32 Issue 2, p299-312 is available online at: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/eej/index.htmlLabor marketHome marketCouplesRoommatesLabor-market specializationJournal Article3222993122013-06-26https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ie/