Is the Tied Returnee Male or Female? The Trailing Spouse Thesis Reconsidered

A common finding of 30-40 years of family migration studies worldwide is that such migration primarily benefits the careers of men in couples but generally damages the women's careers. Findings have recently become more nuanced as the research focus has broadened, hinting that families returning to one spouse's region of previous residence might deviate from this general observation of men as gainers. The present research demonstrates that when families migrate to regions where one spouse has previously lived, it is the female spouse who tends to return, the male spouse (and children, if any) accompanying her as a trailing spouse. This result also holds when restricting attention to those few families in which the female spouse experiences the greatest income increase by moving. There is no evidence of a tradeoff between returning to a region of previous residence and career development. The findings suggest that women compensate for the slighter economic gains with greater non-monetary gains. Copyright (c) 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.