The share of US marriages in which both spouses earn about the same rose from 11 percent in 1972 to 29 percent in 2022.
The share in which the wife is the primary or sole breadwinner rose from 5 to 16 percent over the same period.
In egalitarian marriages, wives earned 97 percent of what their husbands earned in 2022, up from 89 percent in 1972.
In 29 percent of marriages in the US, the husband and wife earned about the same in 2022. In 1972, the share was 11 percent. This comes from an analysis by Pew Research Center of data from the US Census Bureau.
The researchers sorted opposite-sex married couples by how much each spouse contributes to the couple's combined earnings from work. A marriage counts as egalitarian when both spouses earn between 40 and 60 percent of the income.
Fewer husbands are sole breadwinners
In 1972, the husband was the primary or sole breadwinner in 85 percent of marriages. In 2022, that was true of 55 percent.
The biggest change came during the first two decades. The share of marriages in which only the husband had earnings fell from 49 percent in 1972 to 23 percent in 1992. It has stayed at about the same level since then. The share in which the husband earned the most but the wife also had earnings fell from 42 percent in 1992 to 31 percent in 2022.
At the same time, more wives have become breadwinners. In 1972, the wife was the primary or sole breadwinner in 5 percent of marriages. In 2022, the share was 16 percent. The wife was the sole breadwinner in 6 percent of marriages, compared with 2 percent 50 years earlier.
Together with the egalitarian marriages, this means that the wife earned about as much as the husband, or more, in nearly half of all marriages in 2022.
Almost the same pay
In the egalitarian marriages, pay was almost equal in 2022. The median earnings of wives were $60,000 a year, and those of husbands were $62,000. So wives earned 97 percent of what their husbands earned. In 1972, the figure was 89 percent.
Two incomes lift households
Marriages with two incomes had a median income of about $135,000 to $145,000 in 2022, adjusted for household size. Marriages with one income were at around $75,000.
Only 1 percent of marriages with two incomes were below the poverty line. Among couples in which only the husband or only the wife had an income, the shares were 7 and 9 percent, respectively.
Incomes in the US have also risen for all income groups since 1979, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
Work and education behind the change
In the first decades, the change was tied to more and more married women going to work, according to Pew. Education also plays a role. Among adults ages 25 and older, a larger share of women than men have a four-year college degree, according to Pew. When the wife has more education than the husband, she is more likely to earn more, Richard Fry, a researcher at Pew, told CNBC.
In 2022, the wife had more education than the husband in 24 percent of marriages, up from 19 percent in 1972. In those marriages, the wife was the breadwinner in 25 percent of cases.
Ruth Thomas of the pay data company Payscale told CNBC that women are having fewer children and having them later in life. This has likely helped push their earnings up.
Pew also asked 5,152 American adults how they view work and family. 77 percent said that children are better off when both parents focus equally on their job and their home.
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