the purpose of this study was to compare the consumption of personal and material resources between working wives and full-time housewives and to conceptualize the cost of working wives by the degree of additional consumption of the resources. The proposed costs of working wives included the long working time (time cost), the short leisure time(energy cost), the increase of expenditures fro services and the serious role conflict(psychological cost). Three methods, t-test, simple regression analysis, multiple regression analysis/tobit analysis were used to analyse the differences in consumption of resources between two groups. On the basis of the analysed results, the employment cost of working wives were discussed.