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This paper shows how a shorter fecundity horizon for females (a biological constraint) leads to age and educational disparities between husbands and wives. Empirical support is based on data from a natural experiment commencing before and ending after China’s 1980 one-child law. The results indicate that fertility in China declined by about 1.2–1.4 births per woman as a result of China’s anti-natalist policies. Concomitantly spousal age and educational differences narrowed by approximately 0.5–1.0 and 1.0–1.6 years, respectively. These decreases in the typical husband’s age and educational advantages are important in explaining the division of labor in the home, often given as a cause for the gender wage gap. Indeed, as fertility declined, which has been the historical trend in most developed countries, husband-wife age and educational differences diminished leading to less division of labor in the home and a smaller gender wage disparity. Unlike other models of division of labor in the home which rely on innately endogenous factors, this paper’s theory is based on an exogenous biological constraint.

The National Food Survey records of household food purchases and information concerning the dietary pattern of the population, obtained from estimates of total food consumption in the UK showed that the nutritional value of the household diet exceeded the recommended daily intake for the majority of nutrients, at least until the end of 1973. However, it is known that with decreasing family income and increasing family size, average nutrient intake may fall below the recommended daily level for a few nutrients. The National Food Survey gives no indication of how food is distributed within the home, and it has long been recognised that children are a vulnerable group, particularly within larger families (3–4 or more children) on low incomes. The school meal was developed partially as a means of improving the diets of such vulnerable children.