The Double Income Family Amplifier

 There is a general concern about the widening gap in income between the wealthy and the average worker.  In the analysis of how that gap has developed I have never seen anyone mention what I see as a very fundamental cause:  the growth of two incomes in a single family and their often amplifying effect.

In the 50’s, the era we nostalgically view as a high point in middle class opportunity and standard of living, most families had a single income, which was typically the father’s.  Then, in the 70’s and onward, two major trends led to major changes.  The first was the feminist movement, which launched women into careers in great numbers.  The second was the decrease in real wages.  In order to compensate for this decrease and still be able to meet the rising expectations of the American dream, many middle and lower economic scale families chose to have both adults work.

The increased opportunities for women are indisputably a positive thing and long overdue.  However, an interesting dynamic occurs that exacerbates the income gap.  In general, a woman who is well educated and pursues a lucrative career path will end up marrying a man who is also well paid.  Doctors will marry doctors, lawyers may marry lawyers, engineers will marry engineers and so on, with all the possible permutations.  This may not always be true, but I am guessing that it is true well over 70% of the time.

Then, a simple arithmetic fact becomes apparent with this example:  if you have single wage earners with salaries of $30k and $100k, the difference is $70k.  If their spouses are in similar professions at a similar level of salary, then the combined salaries are $60k and $200k respectively, which give a differential of $140k.  This is a very large income difference that produces a dramatic lifestyle disparity.  Even if we assume that the $60k family can live reasonably well on their income, which, when one considers that childcare, healthcare, transportation and a host of other expenses chip away insidiously at one’s available income, is certainly not a given, the unrelenting reminders of such a large difference in lifestyle must certainly be dispiriting for those near the bottom of the income ladder. 

And of course $100k is not even a very high salary.  Two doctors who are married will easily pull in a combined $500-$800k, or even more.

There is no easy ‘solution’ to this acceleration of the income gap.  The genie is out of the bottle and no one wants to return to a world where women stayed at home with no career opportunities.  And it is also unlikely that we will evolve to a world where doctors marry fast food servers.  If anything, the situation will become even more complex and fractured as more middle class jobs are eliminated by automation.  Thus, we seem to be destined to become a more skewed society of haves and have nots, which cannot be a healthy situation even if the have nots are not starving or destitute.