Pew Research Center Study Examines Breadwinner Status in Married-Couple Families

A new study from the Pew Research Center finds that among married couples in the United States, women’s financial contributions have grown steadily over the last half century. While men remain the main breadwinner in a majority of opposite-sex marriages, the share of women who earn as much as or significantly more than their husbands has roughly tripled over the past 50 years.

According to the study, in 29 percent of marriages today, both spouses earn about the same amount of money. Just over half of all marriages today have a husband who is the primary or sole breadwinner and 16 percent have a breadwinner wife. In 1972, the husband was the sole earner in 49 percent of married-couple families. Today, the figure is 23 percent.

The study also found that women pick up a heavier load when it comes to household chores and caregiving responsibilities, while men spend more time on work and leisure. This is true in egalitarian marriages – where both spouses earn roughly the same amount of money – and in marriages where the wife is the primary earner. The only marriage type where husbands devote more time to caregiving than their wives is one in which the wife is the sole breadwinner. In those marriages, wives and husbands spend roughly the same amount of time per week on household chores.

On average, wives in egalitarian-earner households spend 6.9 hours taking care of individuals in the household and 4.6 hours doing housework per week. Husbands spend roughly 5 and 2 hours on these activities, respectively. In houseolds where the husband is the primary earner, wives spend an average of 9.4 hours per week on caregiving (compared with 4.4 hours for husbands), and they spend 7.3 hours on housework (vs. 1.4 hours for husbands).