Fascinating. Suggests trial and error favoring specialization efficiencies over diversification strategies.
— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) May 14, 2020
(I am a member of a dual-career couple, but don't see any particular reason my preferences should be normative). https://t.co/78kCVydfp0
May 14, 2020
The return of the single-earner household?
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I've been part of a single-earner household for all but 4 of 44 years of marriage. I recommend it highly.
Husband only and wife only both went up, msaning perhaps that somebody lost a job rather than a return to the traditional.
Well SAHM became a thing, too, about that time.
I wonder where Full time + part time couples fall on that scale. I would say my family is single earner, but my wife works part time and pulls in a house payment working a few hours a week as a medical translator.
It's still possible to do this today. We started 14 years ago. The best advice I received was to always love off of one income even when you're both working so that you never get used to having more. It worked for us.
(Sorry if this is a repost, I got the error page of death)
Voila! An renewed interest in man and his wife pairings. How dare they.
It'll be interesting to see how the current evolving economic crisis effects this. My guess is that we'll see an acceleration in the increase in single earners.
I’ve been grateful many times that my husband decided to stay home with our 2 young kids, but I’m especially grateful now. I can’t imagine how we’d manage without in this. But even during regular times, it makes so much more sense in a lot of ways I’d never thought of. Plus, “progressive” women hate this, so that’s an added bonus.
(And just for the record, rhhardin, he left a solid job completely voluntarily after our first came.)
campy said...
I've been part of a single-earner household for all but 4 of 44 years of marriage. I recommend it highly.
With only a slight variation in years, ditto.
Why don't these numbers seem to add up to 100%?
Looks to me that the numbers reached a stable point in the early nineties and have been consistent since then with some minor variation that could be explained by retirements and an aging population.
Or it could be an the "The return of the single-earner household."
That would be an improvement over the zero earner household that we now have.
"Includes all families, with or without children present"
I suspect the cohort of greatest interest to most people are the choices made during "family formation" years bounded mostly by age, prime earning years and child rearing.
Aggregating the entire population here obscures that with the influence of host of other factors over time including age demographics, skill-technological change, wealth distribution, tax rate and retirement/social security policy.
The percent of women participating in the U.S. labor force peaked 20 years ago.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300002
Isn't that interesting? It seems we really only ever hear about dual career couples. Like that's the only real lifestyle out there.
Meh. Dual earner down from 60% to 53% over 20 years.
McArdle extrapolates the way Ken B. did with coronavirus deaths.
Perhaps male participation is the more surprising chart:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300001
Declining as women took more of the jobs? Yes. Declining as boomer retirements grew and life expectancy lengthened? Probably. But still.
A supposed economist is shocked by 1) specialization and 2) a trend not going all the way to 100%?
Has she ever heard of a second derivative?
When women earn more money than their husbands, the men get very hostile and demand a more traditional division of household labor. High earning women partnered with losers are very unhappy because they get stuck with the bulk of housework and childcare. This is why working class men have terrible marriage prospects: their women do ALL of the work. It's kind of funny. Women really can't have their cake and eat it too! The Princeton Mom was right. Marry smart!
An renewed interest in man and his wife pairings. How dare they.
Ah, yes, couples. We're not children anymore, but we would like to have children. So, we reconcile, and order our priorities accordingly.
"Single earner, double earner, triple earner--no difference to us. We'll find a way to pick all their pockets anyway!"--The "Liberal" Hive.
Understatement that McCardle is not normal.
That is interesting and surprising. In my entire range of acquaintance, I can only think of one couple with a full-time stay-at-home Mom. Lot’s of part-timers though. I’d be curious to know if at least one educated and career-driven spouse is a higher indicator of stay-at-homeness in a couple than traditional and blue-collar.
We like it.
I wonder where Full time + part time couples fall on that scale. I would say my family is single earner, but my wife works part time and pulls in a house payment working a few hours a week as a medical translator.
5/14/20, 10:36 AM
Historically women worked in some capacity, even if piecework from the home, so it wouldn't be that unusual.
The dual-career couple rise is likely an artifact of the boom in divorce in the 70s, along with second-wave feminism. Basically two generations of women were either encouraged, or forced by necessity, to enter the workforce full-time and stayed there. By 1996 you start seeing GenX, who were the original latchkey kids, beginning families and avoiding their parent's mistakes.
"The best advice I received was to always love off of one income even when you're both working so that you never get used to having more."
I think Elizabeth Warren's old book even recommended that.
Must be a lot of zero earner households to get up to 100%.
I am a member of a dual-career couple,
I'm sure she'd be the first to admit this, but it's far easier to be dual income with no kids. It's not even a relevant comparison to mix the groups.
Suggests trial and error favoring specialization efficiencies over diversification strategies.
I prefer errors favoring specialization strategies over diversification efficiencies and efficient strategies over specialized diversities without a trial.
I used to like Megan a lot 5-6 years ago. Even when she wrote for Bloomberg and Atlantic.
She really drank the koolade when she went to WaPo. The few times I see something from her these days I find her quite unreadable.
Both style and content have suffered
John Henry
Many more zero earner households in the future.
Which means that the two-earner households can afford things that others can't. Maybe they should make a law...
MayBee said...
Isn't that interesting? It seems we really only ever hear about dual career couples. Like that's the only real lifestyle out there.
My wife is one of six kids, all married adults with multiple kids. All the wives (siblings and in-laws) graduated from college and all at least at one point worked.
5 of the 6 are now out of the workforce. AS far as I can tell there is one commonality: because they can.
OT: With Burr out as Senate Intelligence Chair, will he be succeeded by someone more aggressive in going after attempts to undermine the President?
"I'm sure she'd be the first to admit this, but it's far easier to be dual income with no kids. It's not even a relevant comparison to mix the groups."
This is true. They should be separated out. I wonder what the lines would look like if you only included households with children. Since households with no children have increased, would there be even more of a single earner trend in households with children?
We are now deeply into the No Earner phase of the game.
This won’t end well.
"earner" as in taxable.
John Henry @ 12:01
I agree with your assessment of McArdle's writings since moving to WaPo. It's like they did a secret lobotomy on her during her new employee orientation.
REALITY:
Nearly 3 times as many households are husband-only wage earner as wife-only.
TV ADs:
More than 10 times as many households are wife-only wager as husband-only.
All those obligatory scenes of men holding laundry baskets while wife arrives from work? It's not reality, so is that the world women aspire to create, or the word feminist ad writers aspire to create?
Most dual-income marriages exist because neither spouse makes enough singly to cover household expenses.
"I wonder where Full time + part time couples fall on that scale. I would say my family is single earner, but my wife works part time and pulls in a house payment working a few hours a week as a medical translator."
If her income is helping reduce any household expenses, you're in a dual-income marriage.
So even back in the "Stone-age 60s" Forty percent of households had two income families. All feminism did was push the number up from 40 to 60 percent.
McArdle says she is part of a "dual-career" marriage. Most marriages in which both spouses work are in "duel-worker" marriages, a significant distinction.
Her eyes are exposed.
Good idea, if the hubby or wife makes real good money.
I've told my wife several times to up her financial game, so I can lounge around more at the house....
That was a joke.
In the Bay Area, it's very expensive. Very few single-earner households in my circle. My wife was happiest when she worked part-time, when the kids were young.
Carry on, Comrades.
These stats are meaningless? Nothing to do with the 2008-09 'Deep Recession'?
For a combination of recession and family medical reasons, I was out of the workforce during my daughter's toddler years. When we decided I would go back to work, the math said I needed to earn $25/hr just to cover the costs of being a dual-income couple. That was with one child. Add a second child and I imagine most couples would be better off with one staying home.
At first glance I read that as the return of the single breasted houndstooth.
And I thought, I hadn’t realized it had ever gone away
If the 2nd wage earner makes $100K, the absolute best they net is $45K after taxes and expenses if they have just one kid in day care. If they have two, the net goes down to no more than $30K.
Let's remember the Depression. Men had to leave home to become itinerant laborers. 20% started new families and never came back.
The solution now? Morals and fidelity.
Add a second child and I imagine most couples would be better off with one staying home.
The children would certainly be better off.
It's a rational decision when you consider the cost of child care.
As we move towards increased automation, this is one way to limit unemployment
“Most dual-income marriages exist because neither spouse makes enough singly to cover household expenses”
Egads, when did Cookie become Ward Cleaver? Not my marriage and not the marriages of dozens of couples I know. In the absence of small children or some all-absorbing pastime, most people want to do something outside of the home.
At Peace Pavilion West, we have a Communal work model: The leader's wives oversee quality in the fields.
Community member's income is paid in bug-paste, empathy, and Earthsong.
Have you heard Ludmilla's latest Commandments on Climate? She's worth her weight in gold.
Namaste.
Women have careers.
Men have jobs.
"If her income is helping reduce any household expenses, you're in a dual-income marriage." - Robert Cook
Well, if so that raises other questions. My wife spends 80-90% of her "work week" in the "traditional" SAHM role. In fact, I would say over half of traditional SAHM's I know have some manner of a side gig that brings in money. But I think our model is not what most people would think of if they heard we were a dual income family. And what percent of dual-income group is closer to the modified single-income, and what is true full time dual income?
I was a stay home mom. I, and my entire family, have decided that each extended family should have one stay home person. For us it was me.
When my mil fought cancer twice I was the one that cooked for her family. When my sister had cancer I cooked for her and became her chauffeur. FIL had knee replacement he moved in with us and I took care of him. With a widower and two divorcees in the family my dinner table is the weekly focal point (it is my table because my husband and son are quite happy eating at the coffee table). I am the on call fix it person for five nuclear/one extended families/family.
We could definitely survive without someone filling my roll but there is a lot less stress on everyone since it is. We get along better.
We are a single earner household. I retired and the better half works. I did clock 1400 hours last year at three jobs. But I still feel retired, because thats only 50% of the hours I retired from.
It's disgusting to have the chart posted for six damned hours and no one realizes what it is telling us.
(1) The percentage of married households with two income earners did indeed crest circa 1996 and then declined. But circa 2011 it leveled off and has stayed pretty much level.
(2) Percentage of households where the male is the sole income earner drifted down until circa 1996, to somewhere in the 17% to 18% range, drifted slightly up to 19%, and has been essentially level between 19% to 20% since 2005.
(3) The interesting graph is the percentage that has the female as the sole income earner. This chart shows a steady upwards trend from the mid-1960s until circa 2009, then levels off around 9% and remains essentially level in the 8% to 9% range thereafter.
I don't understand how Patrick T. Brown can write "Male-breadwinner (and female-breadwinner) model has been slowly ticking up ever since [1996]." All trends are essentially flat since circa 2010.
Dear Megan:
Wearing a mask with breathing vents is virtue signalling. The main purpose of a mask is to prevent others from catching the bug, not to protect you.
Surgeons wear masks to protect the patient, not to keep them from catching a ruptured appendix.
Thanks in advance.
My wife was a SAHM until the youngest entered Jr High. We bought out our business partner and she started working part time. Once the youngest was in High school, she went back and got her degree.
She was a pre-med on scholarship when we got married, but had an accident 1-month in and was forced to quit school once she delivered the son and heir.
This completely flipped out her family who thought she had zero maternal instincts therefore would make a great doctor. However they were all wrong, she had the perfect combination of love affection brains discipline and creativity. All of her hard work is now paying off in spades with the grandkids who quite obviously love her more than anyone. She also makes my role as the paterfamilias more successful and very easy to perform.
We're a L O N G way from the old "ideal" of the Dad earning the bread and the Mom baking it. The survey shows about 52% of families with both spouses working, and about 19% with Dad being the sole breadwinner. I grew up in the old "ideal". I thought it worked pretty well. If I were a socialist I'd demand that every breadwinner be paid enough that the other spouse wouldn't have to work (and if I were a SERIOUS socialist, I'd PROHIBIT the other spouse from working -- just keep churning out babies to be new workers for THE STATE!).
Megan McCardle is currently caring for her Covid infected father. Don't make fun of her mask. She's trying to avoid becoming a patient instead of a caregiver.
It would be more interesting to see the numbers for families with children and a breakdown of part time vs full time.
If you are half of a dual-career couple, you can afford to buy fancy masks. Other of her tweets name drop a fancy DC restaurant and express her contempt for Taco Bell. Dual-career couple-yes; deplorable: no. And what's with the head covering-- looks like a scarf on top of a hoodie. What's that all about?
"It's disgusting to have the chart posted for six damned hours and no one realizes what it is telling us."
If you read the other comments maybe you won't feel so disgusted.
I doubt the dual income curve will go down much more. Not by choice, anyway. I don't think most couples are willing to take a big drop in their standard of living even if it's a realistic option.
We did it, and even paid off the house, which was and is still great.
We'd be shafted if we tried to keep up the payments now.
We have one car, one internet, no cable, and a big book / DVD library.
What did we miss?
After our child was born, my wife and I made a deal: she would retire from management at the USPS and be a SAHM and I would continue working as a USPS manager and then Postmaster. For 7 years. At that point, I resigned, took my "retirement" in a lump sum and paid off all our debts, brought our mortgage balance down to $20,000 and bought her a new van. She was reinstated into the USPS as a craft employee ($45,000) a year. I so enjoyed being a SAHD, taking my daughter to school, cleaning and cooking (I always cooked as I was a chef in previous life). But guess what? She didn't like working full time again after 7 years on the gravy train. She started criticizing my housework, something I NEVER did with her. So you guessed it: she divorced me and got the house. The appeals court held that she was used to a dual income lifestyle and by my quitting she deserved the equity in the house to make up for it. I had two shitty lawyers that my parents paid for.
THEOLDMAN
I have forgiven her as she is the mother of my child and has made up for it in other ways. But I will NEVER forget getting screwed.
Homeschooling is one thing that helps reconcile an educated woman or man to being a stay-at-home person. Also, when an adult is at home it's easier to have pets and a garden and a flexible schedule and to do without maids and lawn care people. There's a lot of work at home but it doesn't add cash to the family budget and a lot of young people get locked into a house payment. They only see other realities and possibilities when they're stuck with a huge payment which requires two people working at paid jobs to get the cash. I wonder how the lockdown and online schooling /telecommuting will affect all this? House payments are much less for those willing to live further out and changing that element would enable many other changes.
That chart says that it is about "opposite-sex married-couple families". How many of us are left in North America? Seven?
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