A new research has revealed that a person earning less money as compared to one’s spouse makes it more likely that he/she will have an affair.

Study researchers stated that higher the income gap the greatest will be the chances for a person to have an affair.

Researchers in the new study on the economics of sexual infidelity also show this effect is strongest in financially dependent husbands.

Study’s author, Christin Munsch, a sociologist at the University of Connecticut, called this as the masculine overcompensation thesis.

Researchers in the study, published in the current issue of American Sociological Review, said, “Infidelity may allow economically dependent men to engage in compensatory behavior while simultaneously distancing them from breadwinning spouses … Simply put, threats to masculinity incur more of a loss of status than do threats to femininity”.

The study showed that in the case where women were financially dependent on their husbands and their husbands earned more, they were fewer chances of their wives cheating them.

Researchers stated that the similar trend was not apparent in the case where men were financially dependent.

For the research, Munsch used a longitudinal study of 9,000 people surveyed annually since 1996, when they were all between 12 and 16 years old.

She tracked the participants from the year 2001 to 2011, when these people were adults. She found that men engaged in disloyalty acts in about 12% of the years observed, whereas women, with financially dependent husbands showed a similar increase over the average.

Munsh said women who earned more than their partners challenge the status quo, and are also accurately aware of their deviance from the stereotype of feminine financial dependence.