The Phenomenon of the Dual Earner Family

This research examines the phenomenon of the dual wage earner family in the United States. Changes in the patterns of dual earner families are addressed, and explanations of these changing patterns provided by economic theory are discussed.

changing Patterns of Family Income Earners

One of the more(prenominal) dramatic changes in the United States o'er the past two decades has been the growth of dual-income families. In the mid-1990s, the dual income family is more common than the traditional integrity-income married place where the husband working and the wife stays at home. In 1980, half of each(prenominal) married couples were dual-income. By 1990, this proportion had increased to about 60 percent. This proportion of is not expected to increase during through 2005; however, the event of such households is projected to increase to 35 million by 2000. Dual income families without children in the household in the mid-1990s have a mean annual household income of $54,200, while dual income families with children in the household have a mean annual household income of $50,500.

Whaples, R. "Working Wives and Dual-Earner Families." Southern sparing Journal, 61 (January 1995): 905-906.

Trade with maturation countries has significantly depressed the wage of unskilled labor in the in advance(p) countries. Thus, in the forward-looking countries, households must find ways to maintain income levels. Dual earners is one solution approach to this problem. The developing countries increased their exports of manufactures to the modern countries at a "rapid rate--about 15 percent per year in real terms-- amid 1960 and 1990. This growth has been attributed primarily to a reduction in barriers to trade, including reductions in transportation and communication costs as substantially as in tariffs and other government restrictions. "Almost without exception, preceding(prenominal) analyses have found such trade to have gnomish impact on labor markets in industrial countries.

" Opponents contend, however, "that these studies grossly underestimate the true impact, often because of a mistaken speculation about the labor content of goods imported by the advanced countries from developing countries. The studies commonly assume the labor content of these imports to be the same as the labor content of equal categories of goods fabricate in the advanced countries. However, these supposedly comparable categories are rarely identical to the developing country goods, which have generally bypast out of production in the advanced countries under challenger from developing countries. Production of truly identical goods in the advanced countries would require much more unskilled labor than the comparable (but not at all identical) categories of goods that have survived the competition from developing countries. Thus, previous studies greatly underestimate the impact of goods from developing countries on relative wages in the advanced countries." On the solid ground of corrected estimates, however, "the growth of trade in manufactured goods between the advanced and developing count
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