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 Tell "Leave It to Beaver" good-bye. Between 13 and 20 percent of all U.S. wives earn more money than their husbands, according to researchers at the Saint Louis University School of Public Health who examined U.S. Census Bureau data on nearly 4,000 families gathered between 1996 and 2000.Who are these women? Some of them are superstars who have excelled in the workplace, risen to the top and have a fat paycheck to show for their extraordinary effort. Others are from the working poor where both husband and wife are barely getting by, but the wife earns just a bit more. "We had become so used to the 'Leave It to Beaver' household, and not all households fit into that," said Timothy McBride, Ph.D., director of health policy at Saint Louis University School of Public Health and a study author. Researchers had noticed years ago that some women were out-earning their husbands. However, McBride says they speculated then that the phenomenon was a seasonal and temporary one, such as teachers taking the summer off or construction workers who could not work because of inclement weather. "We found it was more permanent than that. About 60 percent of the time, women who out-earned men did so for at least the three-year period we studied," McBride said. However, it is the women in the working poor that most concern McBride. "Both parts of the couple aren't doing very well, and the woman just happens to be doing better than the man," he said. "That could be because he has health problems or isn't well-linked to the labor force. A significant portion of these men--25 percent--were not in the labor force because of health issues." Alarmingly, previous research has shown there is a higher incidence of domestic violence among lower income families when women out-earn men. The research raises interesting questions in non-traditional households at both end of the economic spectrum about how household work is allocated, such as childcare and cleaning. The study findings were published in the journal Demography. | ||||||||||||||||
