How women entering the workforce increased the household inequality level Since about 1963, women's participation in the workforce increased in the U.S., reaching a peak and plateauing after about 1998. But the increasing level of women entering the workforce has had an interesting unexpected effect of increasing the level of household inequality. How? In older times, usually in upper middle class households, the wife did not work outside the home. It was most common for women to work when they came from poorer or lower middle class households. (Even in the case of lower middle class households, usually the woman only worked during the first few years of her life before having children, and sometimes after the children had grown up) This had an effect of helping to even out the distribution of household income, since if a household was poorer and under financial pressure, then the woman would go out and work. But for households with more sufficient financial means, it was rare for women to work. But what has happened in today? In more recent times, with women holding professional careers, it has become common for people to seek out spouses who earn a similar level of income to themselves. So for example a woman is not going to want to marry a man unless he earns more money than her, or only slightly less. Even among men, there has become an increasing financial pressure to want to find a spouse who can help financially contribute to the household. Many men are even meeting their future spouses in the workplace. This means that higher earning people are marrying each other, while lower income earning people are more likely to marry between themselves. This has had an effect of increasing the level of inequality between different households. (Although of course there are other causes to that, as well) When did this start? I would say around maybe the early 1970s, women began to become college professors. They would usually marry another college professor. This was probably the start of it. College professors earned a moderately high income, but typically not extremely high. This would have been a household that was solidly within the middle class and financially well off, but probably not very high up into the upper level of the middle class. By the early 80s, women began to enter higher level positions in business. There were stories of some career women earning $100,000 (of course they usually worked 60 hours a week and didn't have time for children). Between 1973 and 1980, there was a huge increase in the percentage of women going to law school and medical school. This only continued to gradually increase over the subsequent 15 years. After 1984, it still continued to increase, but at a much slower rate, reaching a peak around 2002 to 2005. So higher income people are marrying between themselves. And higher income earning men are much less likely to marry a low income woman than they were before the 1980s. This could very likely be having an effect on the gene pool. Similar to how in much older times, people from higher classes tended to marry amongst themselves. This is especially the case due to the higher incidence of divorce. With an increasing likelihood that the woman could divorce the man and take half his money, men want a wife who earns a decent amount of money, not too much lower than what he earns. So this is one factor. Between 1960 and 1980, the divorce rate in the U.S. more than doubled. The fact that women have entered the workforce likely has had an effect on increasing prices in the housing market, since households with more money can bid up home prices. This is probably not responsible for the recent skyrocketing increase in housing prices, but I suspect it played a big role in the price increase between around 1988 to 2004. (There has not been a significant increase in the percentage of women entering the workforce since then) So as households with two income earners became the norm, it then required two income earners to be able to afford a house.
