Are More Married Women Breadwinners?

At $40 million, Travis Kelce earns much less than his wife:

It is unusual for a wife to earn more than her husband.

Female Breadwinners

Indicating the male’s primary earning responsibility, close to zero couples have a wife bringing home most of the household income:

However, when a snapshot captures one moment in time, it misses the complexities.

Instead, a closer look reveals that earnings evolve during a marriage. As a result, couples could maintain similar earnings patterns or fluctuate or alternate. One recent study identifies six long-term patterns for wives and four for their husbands. Consequently, 50 percent of the couples followed in the study had a stable dual earner pattern. Meanwhile, for 6 percent of the couples, incomes climbed, fell, or fluctuated similarly for each spouse. By contrast, another 5 percent in the study alternated a primary breadwinner role.

Still, even the studies that trace the ups and downs of marital income conclude that male breadwinners prevailed for one-third of the couples while just 5 percent had the female as the long-term primary source of income. As for the women that wind up with more equal marriages, it’s the individuals who initially had higher education and lucrative employment.

So where are we? Basically, earnings in a marriage are dynamic rather than static. Shown below, the trajectory of each graph depends on how each spouse’s income changes during the marriage::

We should note, though, that wives’ incomes change when their husbands’ earnings fluctuate. By contrast, men have far less of a response to their wives’ earnings.

Our Bottom Line: The British Coastline

When we talk about female breadwinners, our traditional perspective is distant and in large time blocks. However, when we bring our lens in closer, again, we see that all marriages are different.

Returning to water,  we can look again at the British coastline. As always, the closer we look, the more we see:

Correspondingly, when identifying female breadwinners, what you see depends on when you look.

My sources and more: Thanks to The Economist for inspiring today’s post. From there we looked at the 2013 paper that they cited and more recent research. But for the most interesting article, I recommend the Institute for Family Studies.