Female breadwinners dwindle back to near 21-yr average

For 86 per cent of mothers who stay out of the workforce, the reason was to care for family, according to a new report. Photo / Thinkstock

Married-couple, child-rearing families with male sole-breadwinners are five times more prevalent in the US right now than those with female sole-breadwinners.

For all the talk of shifting gender dynamics within the American nuclear family, surprisingly little has changed when it comes to who brings home the bacon.

For one: The share of married heterosexual couples with children under 18 in which the mother is the sole breadwinner declined in 2014 for a fourth year to 5.6 per cent, almost completely erasing the jump made in the recession, according to a recent US Bureau of Labor Statistics report. It marked the steepest decline in data going back to 1994. The rate is now only 0.3 percentage point away from its two-decade average.

In the meantime, the share of dual-earning couples is actually lower than it was in 1994. The measure inched up last year to 60.2 per cent, recovering some ground since stumbling to its 2010 low. Still, it's more than a percentage point below the 21-year average.

And the portion of families in which only the father is employed barely declined after reaching a near-record in 2013. That rate last year was 30.8 per cent, also above the long-term average. That means married-couple, child-rearing families with male sole-breadwinners are five times more prevalent in the United States right now than those with female sole-breadwinners.

The labour-force participation rate for women rose significantly during the 1970s and 1980s, thereby increasing the share of dual-earner families, but it started to plateau in the mid-1990s, according to Cornell University economist Francine D. Blau, co-author of a 2013 study that compared female labour-participation rates in OECD countries. "The United States used to be one of the leaders in female labour-force participation," she said. "But we have fallen considerably relative to other developed nations, and a key factor has been their more generous work-family policies."

Separate data from the US Census offer some evidence as to what's driving the disparate rates for mothers and fathers. Looking at labour-force participation for married parents of children under 15, 32 per cent of mothers were not in the labour force last year, meaning they neither maintained nor sought employment. That compared to just 5.8 per cent of fathers.

Why the decision to stay out of the workforce? For 86 per cent of those mothers, it was to care for family. That was the motivation cited by only 24 per cent of fathers. The remaining 76 per cent cited other unspecified reasons.

- Bloomberg