In a recently released study, the Pew Research Center found that husbands and wives are now earning about the same amount in a growing share of marriages across the United States. However, it was also found that even when earnings were similar, the balance between spouses remained uneven as husbands spend more time on paid work and leisure, while wives devote more time to caregiving and housework.
The study’s full report states the study was conducted “to better understand the role women and men play as economic providers in opposite-sex marriages and how this relates to the way spouses divide their time between paid work, leisure, caregiving and housework.”
Women’s financial contributions have grown steadily over the last half century and the share of women who earn as much as, or significantly more than their husband has about tripled over the past five decades. However, in more than half of all marriages (55%), men remain the breadwinners. Fifty years ago, husbands earned the primary income in 85% of marriages. Currently only about 16% of opposite-sex marriages have a breadwinner wife.
Questions used in the poll found that egalitarian marriages – where both spouses earn roughly the same amount of money – are on the rise. Seventy-seven percent of those polled said that children who are being raised in a household with a mother and a father are better off when the mother and the father both focus equally on their job or career and taking care of the children and the home. Today 29% of marriages are egalitarian, up from only 11% in 1972. Wives in egalitarian marriages earn $60,000 at the median, while husbands earn $62,000.
The Pew Research Center is a non-partisan, non-advocacy fact tank that provides information to the public about the issues, attitudes, and trends shaping the world. It administers public opinion polling, demographic research, computational social science research, and other data-driven social science research. Studies include politics and policy, news habits and media, the internet and technology, religion, race and ethnicity, international affairs, social, demographic and economic trends, science, research methodology and data science, and immigration and migration.