Are couples’ relative resources and birthplaces related to household decisions to hire migrant domestic workers?

Household divisions of labour are shifting due to two emerging trends. First, dual-earner households increasingly accept migrant domestic workers (MDWs) to alleviate housework responsibilities. Second, households are increasingly formed through cross-border marriages that challenge single-culture norms of domestic labour division. While prior studies widely documented these trends, less is known about how couples’ resources and birthplace-linked cultures jointly relate to MDW hiring. Using 2021 Hong Kong census data, this study examined how partners’ comparative economic resources and their cultural backgrounds associated with their birthplaces correlate with households’ likelihood of employing MDWs in Hong Kong, one of the world’s largest MDW markets. The findings indicate that the likelihood of households to hire MDWs is more related to the birthplaces of wives than husbands. Couples where both partners are from Mainland China are less likely to outsource than Hong Kong-born couples. The results also suggested that absolute earnings of partners, rather than their relative economic status in their gender-birth cohorts, play a more significant role in the decision to hire MDWs. This research fills a critical knowledge gap on outsourcing behaviours in migrant and native-migrant households with different levels of husband-wife relative economic power, offering valuable insights for policymakers in multicultural contexts.