Are Two Incomes Needed to Prosper Today? Evidence from the 1960s to the 1990s

Abstract

Consumer Expenditure Survey data from 1960 to 1996 are used to examine trends in real consumption, real after‐tax income, market work time, and real after‐tax wages for single‐earner and dual‐earner households. Over the entire time period, most households experienced substantial improvements in measures of their prosperity. However, economic progress was considerably reduced when the comparison was from 1972 to 1996. Also, wage changes dominated changes in market work time over all time periods.

Absolute and Relative Consumption of Married U.S. Households in 1960 and 1996: The Cleavers Meet the Taylors

“…Implications of the rise of dual-earner households in the U.S. have been the subject of several kinds of studies. These include studies devoted to the implications for time-use (Goldscheider and Waite 1991;Shelton, 1992), for child-rearing (Bryant and Zick 1996), for income-specifically, whether two incomes are needed to achieve a living standard that one income provided in earlier decades (Walden 2001), and for consumption patterns (Rubin, Riney, and Molina 1990). Consumption is defined by economists as the value of goods and services purchased by households during a time period (Tregarthen and Rittenberg 2000, p. 413).…”