Sick of squabbling? Household division of labor, disagreement, and ill-health among partnered men and women in Sweden 2000-2010

Individual health and work are closely connected in both positive and negative ways. We investigate the impacts of paid work, unpaid work, and the perception of how work is shared, on subjective and objective health measures in contemporary Sweden. We focus on how gender, workload, and disagreement shape health impacts among partnered men and women. We perform multivariate regression analysis on data from the 2000 and 2011 waves of the Swedish Level-of-Living Survey (LNU), making use of information on married and cohabiting individuals (age 25-65). Results show that the division of housework and disagreement over paid work are associated with lower subjective health and psychological well-being, but associations differ according to age and gender. The results indicate that interpersonal conflict regarding hours and organization of work matter for both men’s and women’s subjective health where dual-earner couples is the norm.