This may be one of many reasons that the share of young adults in marriages decreased 30 to 50 percent across various racial and ethnic groups from 1970 to 2008. Clearly, a choice to marry later in life explains part of this decline, but Ms. Bertrand and her co-authors estimate that the trend in the percentage of women making more than men explains almost one-fourth of the marriage rate’s decline in the 40 years ended in 2010.

What happens when a man marries a woman who has the education and skills to earn more than him? The couple can avoid violating the “man earns more” social norm if the woman works part time or leaves the labor force altogether. The authors found evidence of both choices. But what if the woman stays in the labor force and does earn more than her spouse? How does this affect the marriage? The findings here are striking. In such couples, surveys show, both wife and husband generally report being less happy about the marriage.

Given these findings, it isn’t surprising that when a wife earns more than her husband, the risk of divorce rises, too. To study this, the authors used a survey conducted in two waves, 1987-88 and 1992-93. (There were no more recent data available for this particular test.) Then they investigated the likelihood of a divorce in the five-year interval. For this sample, some 12 percent of all couples were divorced during this period — a sobering fact about the stability of marriages in general. But the divorce rate rose by half, to about 18 percent, for couples in which the wife earned more than the husband.

How to explain the jump? Some people might think that a wife who earns more will do fewer household chores than her tradition-bound mate expects. Regardless of your opinion about men who harbor such feelings, the facts rule out that explanation: women who earn more than their husbands actually do a greater share of household chores, compared with couples in which the wife works but earns less.

The paper’s findings support the anecdotal complaints of many highly educated, high-earning women who say they can’t find suitable husbands. And as women continue to outperform men in school, these problems are likely to grow. Perhaps over time, men will catch on to this new world and accept the fact that hard-working girls may well turn into highly paid women.

Until that realization sinks in, problems arising from tradition-bound notions of gender identity will keep taking a toll on our economy and our families. Employers, however, may have opportunities to help.