Couples Are Lying to the Census Bureau When the Woman Earns More Money

During the last few years, women have been raising their voices louder and louder in an effort to combat the gender wage gap. Celebrities like Reese Witherspoon and Ellen Pompeo have spoken candidly about unfair salaries in Hollywood. Research, like Glamour's own survey with the CFDA, shows that even when our dollars dominate the industry, we hold only a small percentage of top fashion jobs. And other recent studies—including one that found that the pay gap has more than tripled during the Trump administration—have forced the issue out of the shadows and into the headlines.

But it turns out that even when women are making more than men, many of us are still hiding our true salaries and lying about it, thanks to long-standing gendered issues and cultural norms.

A new study from the Census Bureau is comparing what couples say their income is versus their actual earnings—and the results, sadly, fall right in line with what we've come to know about gender norms. When the wife is the bigger earner in the couple, the husbands claim they earn more than they actually make. At the same time, wives underreport their income. So while they can't hide their income levels from the IRS, many couples are fudging their salaries when talking to the Census folks.

Let's go over that again—women who make more than their husband are underreporting their income. And we can blame "societal expectations about the roles played in married-couple relationships," according to the Census Bureau.

On average, the gap between a husband’s survey and his actual earnings is 2.9 percentage points higher if his wife earns more than he does, and the gap between a wife’s survey and actual earnings in 1.5 percentage points lower if she earns more than her husband does. The study also found that when a wife earns more, both husbands and wives exaggerate the husband’s earnings and diminish the wife’s. But, husbands overstate their own earnings less than wives do, and wives devalue their own earnings less than husbands do.

The researchers posit that these results show that gendered social norms, i.e., that a husband should earn more than his wife, can influence what you'd think would be objective reporting, like your salary.

Translation: We are all carrying with us the burden of a long history of gender bias and a pay gap that persists today. That means it's as important as ever to keep talking about money, salaries, and the wage gap until it becomes completely normal to do so.