Economic Self-Reliance and Gender Inequality Between U.S. Men and Women, 1970–2010

Authors: Deirdre Bloome, Derek Burk and Leslie McCall

Publication: American Journal of Sociology. vol. 124, no. 5

Date: March 2019

Abstract:

Women have become increasingly economically self-reliant, depending more on paid employment for their positions in the income distribution than in the past. We know little about what happened to men, however, because most prior research restricts changes in self-reliance to be ‘zero-sum,’ with women’s changes necessitating opposite and proportionate changes among men. We introduce a measure that allows asymmetric changes and also incorporates multiple population subgroups and income sources beyond couples’ labor earnings. Using Current Population Survey data, we find that women’s self-reliance increased dramatically, as expected, but men’s declined only slightly. We decompose these trends into changes in family structure and redistribution, which increased and decreased self-reliance, respectively, for men and women, though more for women. Labor-market shifts, by contrast, were asymmetric and opposing, reducing men’s self-reliance much less than they increased women’s. Our approach opens opportunities for new insight into both gender inequality and the income attainment process.

Link: Economic Self-Reliance and Gender Inequality Between U.S. Men and Women, 1970–2010

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