Here's How Married Women Are Keeping The American Economy Alive

CEA/Betsey Stevenson

Married women are increasingly the breadwinners in their families, and are basically the only reason that median incomes in the US have risen at all in the last 45 years.

This chart is from Betsey Stevenson, an economist on President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers.

Here's more detail from a recent White House report on work and family:

Among married women who are working, 24 percent earn more than their husbands compared to
only 7 percent in 1970. Growth in married women's earnings has been an essential component of
growth in family incomes with most of the growth in family income over the past several decades
coming from women's rising earnings. In 2013, the income of employed married women comprised
44 percent of their family's income, up from 37 percent of household income in 1970.

This has partially been because women's real incomes have risen at a time when male income has
stagnated. As a result, nearly all of the rise in family income since the 1970s has been due to
women's earnings.