A 24-year study of Australian households has identified an equal sharing of paid work, housework and childcare as a significant predictor of stronger relationships.
The findings come from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey, which has followed about 9,000 households since 2001 and tracked 17,000 people over almost a quarter of a century.
Couples who divided their combined paid and unpaid work approximately evenly reported higher relationship quality than those with a less balanced arrangement. The pattern applied both to couples with dependent children and those without.
Roger Wilkins, an economics professor at Melbourne University and co-author of the report, said higher female workforce participation and stronger career aspirations had helped drive the change.
“Historically, we saw a division of labor where women tended to specialise more in home production as we call it in economics – that is running the household – while men tended to specialise in paid employment, but that has shifted a lot over time,” he said.
“Now less specialisation and a more equitable division of both paid and unpaid work translates to better satisfaction for both partners in a relationship.”
Relationship satisfaction follows a 24-year curve
The research also found that relationship satisfaction typically follows a U-shaped pattern. Ratings are strongest in the early years, decline gradually for about 24 years, then begin to recover year by year.
Inga Lass, a Melbourne University researcher and report co-author, said the lowest point generally came when couples were in their mid-to-late 40s.
“On average, it feels very strong at first, with that rating slowly declining for 24 years, before it picks back up,” she said.
She said pressures including work, household bills and raising children could begin to ease around the 25-year mark, allowing couples to give more attention to their relationship.
The recovery was stronger for men and less pronounced and later for women. Men and women in their 20s and early 30s reported similar satisfaction levels, but a gender gap emerged from the late 30s, with women reporting greater dissatisfaction through the second half of life.
Men nevertheless recorded higher satisfaction scores than women overall, although relationships between life partners were described as “very strong” in Australia.
The data showed that men had increased their household labour by about 12 minutes a day since 2012, while women had not reduced their contribution.
Women reported higher satisfaction when housework and childcare were shared equally, but not when their partner carried out most of those tasks. Women in relationships where they were the main earner also reported lower satisfaction than women in male-primary-earner or equal-earner couples.
The happiest relationships were associated with having no dependent children, relatively even earnings and a balanced share of housework. The lowest satisfaction was recorded among couples with dependent children where the mother was the main earner and also typically performed most unpaid work.
Financial stress and either partner having a disability were identified as clear factors associated with lower relationship quality. Women in same-sex relationships reported greater relationship quality than women in opposite-sex relationships, although the same pattern was not found among men.
People living in mainland capital cities also reported higher relationship quality on average than those in regional and rural areas.
The survey found that relationship ratings between 2020 and 2024 were lower on average than they had been between 2003 and 2006. The report said this may reflect the social and economic disruption since 2020, including the pandemic and the cost-of-living pressures caused by higher inflation and interest rates.
Professor Wilkins said that, in opposite-sex relationships, a woman’s satisfaction was a better predictor of whether the relationship would end than a man’s satisfaction. Women were also more likely to initiate a separation, he said.
