The old cliché is that it's a man's world. But when it comes to men, women and the economies of marriage, the times—it appears—are changing.A study of married couples by the Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C., shows that the number of U.S. wives earning more than their husbands has risen more than five-fold since 1970. And today, the majority of wives is equal to or better educated than their husbands. The study looked at spouses ages 30 to 44—a stage of life when typical adults have completed their education, gone to work and gotten married—over a timeframe of nearly four decades.
To be sure, men still earn more, with 78 percent making at least as much or more than their wives, but the percentage of women earning more than their husbands has jumped from just 4 percent in 1970 to 22 percent in 2007, the study said.
What's more, in 1970, 28 percent of wives had husbands who were better educated, and 20 percent were married to men with less education. By 2007, the percent of wives who had better-educated husbands fell to 19 percent and the percent of women married to less-educated men climbed to 29 percent. Slightly more than half of spouses had matching education levels in both 1970 and 2007.
"This is a portrait of gender-role reversals in marriage," said one of the report's authors, D'Vera Cohn.
The national economic downturn is reinforcing these gender-reversal trends because it has hurt employment of men more than that of women. Males accounted for about 75 percent of the 2008 decline in employment among prime working-age individuals (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2009). Women are moving toward a new milestone in which they constitute half of all the employed. Their share increased from 46.5 percent in December 2007 to 47.4 percent in December 2009.
The Pew study, "The New Economics of Marriage: The Rise of Wives," found that women's earnings "grew 44 percent from 1970 to 2007, compared with 6 percent growth for men.
"That sharper growth has enabled women to narrow, but not close, the earnings gap with men," the report said. "Median earnings of full-year female workers in 2007 were 71 percent of earnings of comparable men, compared with 52 percent in 1970."
Among the report's other findings:
Level Decline of Marriage
These days, Americans are more likely than in the past to cohabit, divorce, marry late or not marry at all. There has been a marked decline in the share of Americans who are currently married. Among U.S.-born 30- to 44-year-olds, 60 percent were married in 2007, compared with 84 percent in 1970.
Patterns by Education Level
There is an education component to this change: The decline in marriage rates has been steepest for the least educated, especially men, and smallest for college graduates, especially women. College graduates, the highest earners, are more likely today to be married than are Americans with less education—69 percent for adults with a college degree versus 56 percent for those who are not college graduates.
That was not the case in 1970, when all education groups were about equally likely to wed. Among college-educated men, 88 percent were married in 1970, compared with 86 percent of men without a college education. Among women, the comparable 1970 figures were 82 percent and 83 percent.
Race Patterns
There are notable differences by race in the education, marriage and income patterns of U.S.-born adults ages 30–44. Black marriage rates, already lower than those of whites in 1970, have dropped more sharply since then, especially for the least educated. Only 33 percent of Black women and 44 percent of Black men were married in 2007.
Although Black men and women had higher household-income growth than men and women overall, the sharp decline in marriage rates among Blacks hindered growth in their incomes. Among Black women with high-school educations, household incomes actually declined from 1970 to 2007, reflecting a change in the composition of this group from majority married (with the higher incomes that accompany this status) to majority unmarried.
The report did not include data on Latinas, Asians or American Indians.
The report also said that women's growing economic clout gives them more financial power in their marriages, giving them a greater say on where and how that money is spent.
A Pew study two years ago found that wives who earned more than their husbands were more likely to have decision-making power, especially over major purchases and household finances.
Specifically, the study found that in 43 percent of all couples, it was the woman who made most of the decisions. And when the wife made more money, she was more than twice as likely to make most decisions on household finances.
Another report published in Financial Advisor said that 88 percent of affluent women are moderately or highly involved in oversight of their wealth or assets.
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