Nearly three in ten American marriages now split earnings almost evenly between husband and wife, up from just 11% in 1972. That figure, from a landmark Pew Research Center analysis, captures one of the most significant shifts in how American households actually run. But the same data holds a catch: the paycheck may be splitting evenly, while the laundry, dishes, and school pickups mostly are not. If you assumed equal earning meant equal effort at home, the numbers say otherwise.
The Breadwinner Model Is Fifty Years Out of Date
In 1972, the husband was the sole or primary breadwinner in 85% of American marriages. By 2022, that number had dropped to 55%, according to Pew’s analysis of Current Population Survey data. Over the same stretch, egalitarian marriages, meaning both spouses earn between 40% and 60% of the household’s combined income, grew from 11% to 29%. Wife-breadwinner marriages, where the wife earns most or all of the household income, tripled from 5% to 16%, split between 6% where she is the sole earner and 10% where she is the primary one.
The financial upside of this shift is measurable. Dual-earner marriages post a median household income between $135,000 and $145,000, with a poverty rate around 1%, compared with roughly $75,000 and a 7% to 9% poverty rate among households relying on one income. Money isn’t the only variable that shifts alongside earnings, though, and Pew’s data on how couples actually spend their time tells a more complicated story.
Equal Paychecks, Unequal Chore Charts
In egalitarian marriages, where both spouses contribute close to equal income, wives still put in 4.6 hours of housework a week compared to 2 hours for husbands, and 6.9 hours of caregiving compared to husbands’ 5 hours. Husbands in these same marriages average nearly four more hours of leisure time per week than their wives do, 25.2 hours versus 21.6. Even in marriages where the wife is the primary earner, she still logs more housework (4.8 hours) and caregiving (6.4 hours) than her husband does. The only arrangement where the pattern flips even slightly is when the wife is the sole earner: her husband then logs more caregiving hours than she does, 6.1 versus 4.1, though he still logs a striking 47.2 hours of leisure per week, the highest of any group Pew measured.
CNBC’s reporting on the same data quoted Richard Fry, a senior researcher at Pew, noting that the gender imbalance in caregiving “persists, even in marriages where wives are the breadwinners,” and that domestic duties “have not been equalized” even as paychecks have. Certified financial planner Stacy Francis told CNBC that despite the earnings shift, “the majority of traditional marriages still adhere to traditional gender roles,” and urged couples to have direct conversations about what is and is not working in their division of labor.
Who Is Becoming the Breadwinner, and Who Isn’t
Wife-breadwinner status is not evenly distributed. Women with a bachelor’s degree or higher are breadwinners in 19% of marriages, compared with 11% among women without a high school diploma. By race, 26% of Black wives are breadwinners compared with 17% of white wives, 14% of Asian wives, and 13% of Hispanic wives. Age matters too: only 11% of wives ages 25 to 34 are breadwinners, compared with 22% of wives ages 55 to 64. Having children also lowers the odds. Wives are breadwinners in 20% of childless marriages, compared with 15% of marriages with children, and just 13% among couples with four or more kids, where 69% still default to the husband as primary provider.
What Couples Actually Believe
The attitudes underneath these numbers are almost as telling as the numbers themselves. Pew found 77% of Americans believe children benefit when both parents focus equally on career and home life, a strong consensus in theory. But asked about their own preferences, 48% of men said they would rather earn more than their wife, versus just 3% who said they would prefer their wife earn more. Women were more evenly split: 26% said they would prefer equal earnings with their husband, 22% said they would prefer he earn more, and only 7% said they would prefer to out-earn him. Meanwhile, 57% of Americans say society values a man’s contributions at work more than a woman’s contributions at home, versus just 35% who say the two are valued equally.
The paycheck gap between husbands and wives has narrowed faster than almost anyone predicted fifty years ago. The chore gap has not moved at anywhere close to the same speed, and that mismatch, not the earnings split itself, is where most of the friction in modern marriages actually lives.
