By contrast, for families in the middle and upper classes, women’s work has generally translated into more family income because marriage is alive and well. The figure below shows that married, two-parent families remain much more common at the upper-end of the family income ladder in America. So, one reason that the rich are getting richer is that they are much more likely to get and stay married, and profit from the benefits of pooling the relatively high income of two parents, compared to families down the income ladder, often relying on the relatively low income of a single parent. In the words of Richard Reeves, policy director of Brookings’ Center on Children and Families, “Matrimony is flourishing among the rich but floundering among the poor, leading to a large, corresponding ‘marriage gap.’”

W. Bradford Wilcox/Rebecca J. Rosen

Another major factor holding back families financially in the bottom 40 percent are declines in men’s income. Consistent with Rosin’s thesis, which argues that many men in the United States are seeing their economic fortunes erode, the graph below indicates that men’s personal income has fallen across most groups, but particularly among working-class and poor men. So, one more reason that family income has declined for poor and working-class families is that husbands and boyfriends have less dough to put on the table than they once did. This is particularly important because, even today, as the Pew report notes, men’s wage rates in couple-headed families are almost “twice as important as those of their female partners for boosting family income.”

Declines in men’s income for this group also help explain why working-class and poor mothers are not getting and staying married as much as their upscale peers. Because they tend to pair off with men who are similarly situated economically as they are, working-class and poor women are less likely to see the men in their lives as marriageable or worth sticking with. Indeed, the research tells us that men’s income remains a strong predictor of marrying and steering clear of divorce court. So, men’s money still matters when it comes to forming and sustaining today’s marriages and, unfortunately, the eroding economic standing of lower-income men means that they are less likely to be deemed worthy of marriage.

Finally, despite all the talk about women as the incipient “richer sex” about to lead the way to a thoroughgoing revolution in gender roles, the fact of the matter is that the gender revolution in married families has largely stalled out since the 1990s. As the graph below indicates, maternal labor-force participation basically came to a halt in the last decade and a half—for married (and single) mothers. This means that a large minority of families, including many lower-income families, do not stand to gain economically from the increases in women’s work documented in this new Pew report.

Current Population Survey

The pattern noted above, along with the fact that most mothers do not work full-time, also means that married families up and down the economic ladder still typically rely more on male breadwinners than on female breadwinners. Men continue to earn the lion’s share of income in married families—about 69 percent, in 2012. Thus, the stalled gender revolution among married families in America is one more reason why marked increases in women’s work have not translated into better financial prospects for families at the lower end of the income ladder, especially ones where mom is not working full-time.