Economic Circumstances and Family Outcomes: A Review of the 1990s

Journal of Marriage and the Family 62 (November 2000): 1035–1051 1035

LYNN WHITE University of Nebraska—Lincoln

STACY J. ROGERS Pennsylvania State University*

l

Economic Circumstances and Family Outcomes:

A Review of the 1990s

This review documents the economic context with-in which American families lived in the 1990s.Despite nearly full employment and growing in-come and wealth for many Americans, problemareas included persistent racial gaps in economicwell-being, growing inequality, and decliningwages for young men. Women showed strongerincome growth than men in the decade, and 2-earner households became increasingly associat-ed with advantage. We review the consequencesof these trends and of economic well-being gen-erally on 4 dimensions of family outcomes: familyformation, divorce, marital quality, and childwell-being. Despite hypotheses suggesting thatwomen’s earnings might have different effects onfamily outcomes than men’s earnings, generallythe review supports the expectation that bothmen’s and women’s economic advantage is as-sociated with more marriage, less divorce, moremarital happiness, and greater child well-being.Important issues regarding measurement, recip-rocal relations between family structure and eco-nomic well-being, and race and gender effects re-main unresolved.

Department of Sociology, University of Nebraska-Lincoln,Lincoln, NE 68588-0324 ([email protected]).

*Department of Sociology, Pennsylvania State University,University Park, PA 16802.

Key Words: economic status, marriage market.

In The Sociological Imagination, C. Wright Mills(1959) argued for the importance of seeing theintimate realities of our own lives within the largersocial and historical context of our times. In thisreview of family research in the 1990s, we con-sider the economic context of family experience.We begin by summarizing the economic climateof the 1990s, followed by a review of researchthat has examined the consequences of income,employment, and economic hardship on familylife. We limit this review by focusing on the Unit-ed States and on a limited set of family out-comes—family formation, marital quality, di-vorce, and child well-being. The review isnecessarily in broad strokes, and important vari-ations in economic circumstances in rural, region-al, and other subpopulations are omitted. We con-clude with a discussion of needed research andunanswered questions.

THE ECONOMIC CLIMATE OF THE 1990S

Two contradictory conditions characterized theeconomic climate of the 1990s. On one hand, theUnited States economy was robust. Economicgrowth averaged 3% per year during the decade,and median per capita income increased, as didthe wealth of that segment of the population withsignificant holdings in the stock market. At theend of the decade, inflation was low, and the un-employment rate was the lowest it had been in 25years (Auerbach & Belous, 1998). These gains

1036 Journal of Marriage and the Family

were most obvious for women, for two-earnerfamilies, and for the college educated.

Below this surface of affluence and securitywere several problem areas, some of which areillustrated in Table 1. First, African Americansand Hispanics continued to experience rates of un-employment 2 to 3 times higher than those fornon-Hispanic Whites (U.S. Bureau of Labor Sta-tistics, 1998a, 1998b). Second, poverty, especiallyamong children, was immune to general economicgrowth, and 19% of children under the age of 18remained in poverty at the end of the decade. Forchildren in mother-headed families, regardless ofrace, nearly 60% of children under age 6 were inpoverty (Dalaker & Naifeh, 1998). Third, manyworkers, including those with lower levels of ed-ucation and young men, experienced stagnation ordecline in earnings during most of the 1990s. Me-dian earnings (in constant dollars) for young adultmen decreased from 1980 to 1995, whereas themedian earnings of young women increased overthe same period. Fourth, a growing number offamilies faced financial uncertainty due to eco-nomic restructuring, contingent work, and thechanging locations of jobs (Wilson, 1996). Final-ly, Table 1 also indicates that there was growinginequality in income from 1980 to the late 1990sas those at the upper ends of the income distri-bution experienced gains, whereas those in thelower quintiles experienced loss.

Most analysts agree that economic conditionsin the 1990s extended long-term trends. To sum-marize briefly, from World War II to approxi-mately 1973, rapid growth in manufacturing, con-struction, and shipping industries contributed tosteady growth in individual income and good jobsfor workers at all education levels. The economicboom, according to Farley (1996), created theAmerican middle class. Beginning around thetime of the 1973 oil crisis, economic growthchanged course. An increased reliance on con-sumer spending on services and the internation-alization of markets and production contributed toan eventual shift away from manufacturing, aswell as an increased use of technology in manu-facturing. This restricted opportunities for ‘‘goodjobs’’ in manufacturing for those with less edu-cation. In addition, growth in service and tech-nology-based sectors of the economy increasedthe opportunities for technologically skilled work-ers (Farley; Wilson, 1996). These changes, in con-junction with changes in family structure and inwomen’s economic roles, affected the relation be-tween the family and the economy during the

1990s. Below we review some of the ways thishas occurred.

Labor Force Participation and Unemployment

Table 1 indicates that from 1980 to the late 1990s,labor force participation increased for women butgenerally decreased slightly for men, continuingthe long-term convergence of men’s and women’swork experience. In 1990, 74% of women aged25 to 54 years were in the labor force, comparedwith 94% of men. By 1998, rates had increasedto 77% for women and decreased to 92% for men(U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1998b). Al-though women’s labor force participation rates re-main lower than men’s, their growing commit-ment to paid work is demonstrated in overallincreases and in growing convergence amongwomen, as factors such as marital status, age, race,and motherhood became less influential in deter-mining women’s labor force participation (Spain& Bianchi, 1996).

Table 1 indicates that the total unemploymentrate among those aged 16 years and over declinedfrom 7% in the mid-1980s to 4.5% by 1998 (U.S.Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1998b). All groups ex-perienced declines in unemployment during thedecade, but race and education continued to dif-ferentiate work opportunity. When White unem-ployment reached a low of 4% in 1998, AfricanAmerican rates were 9%, and Hispanic rates were7% (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics). Even duringthis period of very low unemployment, nearly20% of African American men ages 20 to 24seeking employment were unable to find it (U.S.Bureau of the Census). Inequality in employmentopportunity was further exacerbated by education-al differentials. Unemployment rates in 1998 were7% for those with less than a high school educa-tion compared with 2% for individuals with a col-lege degree (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics). Per-haps because those who remain unemployed inperiods of high employment demand represent amultiple-problem population, the average lengthof unemployment spells increased during this de-cade (U.S. Bureau of the Census).

Individual Earnings

Finding work has been easier than finding workthat offers good pay and job security. Job growthduring the 1990s was most pronounced in servicesand in information and technology industries(Hout, Arum, & Voss, 1996), contributing to the

1037Economic Circumstances and Family Outcomes

TABLE 1. CHANGES IN SELECTED ECONOMIC AND FAMILY-RELATED INDICATORS, 1980 TO THE LATE 1990S

Indicator 1980 1985 1990 1995 1998

EmploymentPercent of men of prime working age in

labor force (age 25–54 years)WhiteAfrican AmericanHispanicAsian/Pacific Islanders

94.295.088.493.089.5

93.994.887.892.289.1

93.594.487.492.388.3

91.692.784.191.088.7

91.892.984.491.690.1

Percentage of women of prime working agein labor force (ages 25–54 years)WhiteAfrican AmericanHispanicAsian/Pacific Islanders

64.063.467.654.564.8

69.669.471.757.366.9

74.174.473.762.367.8

75.676.374.462.967.6

76.576.678.365.871.4

Percentage of married women in labor force(1997) (ages 16 and over, all races)With children under 6 yearsWith children 6 to 17 years only

50.145.161.7

54.253.467.8

58.258.973.6

61.163.576.2

62.163.677.6

UnemploymentTotal unemployment rate (ages 16 and over)

WhiteAfrican AmericanHispanic

7.16.3

14.310.1

7.26.2

15.110.5

5.64.8

11.48.2

5.64.9

10.49.3

4.53.98.97.2

Asian/Pacific Islander Not availableIncome and earnings

Median earnings for young adults (ages 25to 34) (1998 dollars, in thousands, all races)WomenMen

Median family income (1998 dollars, inthousands, all races)

13.8130.86

14.9728.27

15.7026.68

16.6425.25

18.2628.12

All FamiliesMarried Couples

Married couple, wife employedMarried couple, wife not employedFather-headed familiesMother-headed families

41.6445.8353.2437.5834.7020.61

42.0247.1155.1937.2034.2720.69

44.0949.7558.3437.7436.2221.11

43.4450.3359.7134.6232.4721.06

46.7454.1863.3735.6735.6822.16

Percentage of aggregate income receivedby each fifth and by the top 5% of families(all races)Top 5%Highest quintileFourth quintileThird quintileSecond quintileLowest quintile

14.641.124.417.611.65.3

16.143.124.316.911.04.8

17.444.323.816.610.84.6

20.747.223.015.79.94.2

20.747.223.015.79.94.2

Percentage of children living in poverty(under age 18)All racesWhiteAfrican AmericanHispanicAsian/Pacific Islander

18.311.842.333.2n/a

20.712.843.640.3n/a

20.612.344.838.417.6

20.811.241.940.019.5

18.910.636.734.418.0

Note: Information compiled from the following sources:U.S. Bureau of the Census (1998). Statistical Abstract of the United States (118th ed.). Washington, DC: U.S. Government

Printing Office. Tables 84, 654.U.S. Bureau of the Census. Historical income tables—people, (Table) P-7, age of people by median income and gender:

1947–1997. Retrieved July 21, 2000 from the World Wide Web: http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/p07.htmlU.S. Bureau of the Census. Historical income tables—families. (Table) F-7, type of family (all races) by median income

and mean income: 1947–1997. Retrieved July 21, 2000 from the World Wide Web: http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/f07.html

U.S. Bureau of the Census. Historical poverty tables—people, (Table) 3, poverty status of people, by age, race, and Hispanicorigin: 1959–1997. Retrieved July 21, 2000 from the World Wide Web: http://www.census.gov/hhes/poverty/histpov/hstpov3.html

U.S. Bureau of the Census (1997).U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Accessed March 10, 1999 at ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/ep/labor.force/clra8096.dtaU.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (1998a).U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (1998b).


growth of jobs at both ends of the spectrum. Far-ley (1996) noted the simultaneous growth in the1980s and early 1990s of ‘‘bad’’ jobs, which re-quired less education and paid minimum wage,and of ‘‘good’’ jobs that required more educationand skill and paid more than $25 dollars per hour.At the same time, job growth in the middle of theearning and education distributions declined, andmanufacturing jobs that once provided securityand good wages for workers with less educationbecame more scarce (Hout et al.).

Consistent with this bifurcation in job oppor-tunities, individual earnings growth varied by ed-ucation. Between 1963 and 1997, the median in-come for men with a bachelor’s degree or higherincreased 22% from $38,496 to $47,126 (in 1997constant dollars). For all other education levels,men’s incomes have actually fallen during this pe-riod. For example, among men with a high schooldiploma, median income declined 12% from$28,914 in 1963 to $25,453 in 1997. Men withouta high school diploma experienced an even moredramatic decline in income of 32%. In contrast,women’s incomes have increased at all levels ofeducation over the period from 1963 to 1997 (U.S.Bureau of the Census, 1998a). The largest increas-es, however, were for women with a bachelor’sdegree, whose median incomes rose 53%, from$19,443 in 1963 to $29,781 in 1997 (in constantdollars).

As a result of these trends, the earnings gapbetween women and men continued to close dur-ing the 1990s. In 1998, the female-to-male medianweekly earnings ratio was 76% for full-timeworkers. This ratio was 85% among AfricanAmericans and 86% for Latinos (U.S. Bureau ofLabor Statistics, 1999). Among workers with ahigh school education or less, women’s relativegains were primarily the result of declines inmen’s wages and increases in women’s annualweeks of work. Among workers with a collegedegree, some of the closing gender gap reflectedgrowing opportunities for college-educated wom-en in the expanding service sector of the economyin which women are concentrated. In addition, co-hort replacement affected women’s earnings asolder women left the labor force and were re-placed by a larger group of younger, more edu-cated women who were more likely to work full-time (Danziger & Gottschalk, 1995; Spain &Bianchi, 1996).

To the extent that men’s lower earnings delayfamily formation or significantly inhibit men’sability to support their children, the stagnation of

young men’s wages is particularly important(Cherlin, 1992; Wilson, 1996). Until recently,each generation of men has fared better, in termsof median income, than their father’s generationfared at comparable ages. In the last 2 decades,however, young men’s fortunes stagnated and de-clined and, even after a substantial recovery be-tween 1995 and 1998, young men’s median earn-ings in 1998 remain below those of 20 years ago.In contrast, young women have experienced con-tinuing economic improvement in earnings rela-tive to their mothers’ generation (Spain & Bian-chi, 1996). In sum, the 1990s was a decade ofdeclining economic resources for young men andthose with less than a college degree. At the sametime, advances in women’s earnings helped offsetthese declines for many two-earner families.

Family Income

The link between family structure and family in-come grew during the 1990s. Table 1 indicatesthat the median income of married couple familiescontinued to be higher than that for families withone parent, regardless of the gender of the parent.Until relatively recently, the economic advantageof married-couple families stemmed from theirhaving access to male earnings, which were muchhigher than female earnings. During the 1980s andcontinuing through the 1990s, however, their ad-vantage was increasingly due to the presence oftwo earners (Cattan, 1998; Levy, 1995; McNeil,1998). Having two earners was normative amongmarried couples of all races during the 1990s. In1994, for those couples in which the husband wasemployed, wives were also employed in 61% ofHispanic, 79% of African American, and 75% ofWhite couples in 1994 (Cattan). Furthermore,wives’ earnings made significant contributions tofamily resources. Table 1 indicates that the medianincome for married couple families without anemployed wife actually declined from 1980 to1998, from $37,580 in 1980 to $35,670 in 1998(in 1998 constant dollars). When wives were em-ployed, the median family income in married cou-ple families rose over this period from $53,240 in1980 to $63,370 in 1998 (in 1998 constant dol-lars). Paralleling general trends in income by gen-der, single-mother families experienced slight in-come gain during the period ($20,610 in 1980 to$22,160 in 1998), whereas single-father familiesexperienced actual income declines in the early1980s and early 1990s.

These data provide important evidence for the


essential nature of women’s economic contribu-tions to their families. All of the increases in me-dian income for married couples during this pe-riod were due to the growing economiccontributions of wives (McNeil, 1998). Hispanic,African American, and White couples with twoearners were one fourth as likely to be poor assimilar couples with only a male earner (Cattan,1998).

Income Inequality

Changes in family income during the 1990s werestrongly influenced by position within the incomedistribution. Families in the upper quintiles of theincome distribution benefited disproportionatelyfrom economic growth. Virtually all of the gainsduring the 1990s went to the top 20% of the in-come distribution. As Table 1 indicates, the top5% enjoyed the most improvement whereas theincomes of the lower two quintiles fell (Freeman,1998; Levy, 1995; Yellen, 1998). This is true forAfrican Americans and Hispanics as well as forWhites (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1997). Putanother way, although the percentage of Ameri-cans whose incomes were below the poverty linehas remained close to constant at 13%, the pro-portion of American families earning more than 7times the poverty rate nearly doubled from 6 to12% (Danziger, 1996).

The effect of these increases in income in-equality could be moderated if social class mo-bility increased. In a study of family income mo-bility patterns from 1967 to 1991, however,Gittleman and Joyce (1999) indicated that mobil-ity has changed little during this period and thatthe likelihood of upward mobility is especiallylow for those in families headed by young adultsor by individuals with less than a college degree.

Three explanations are offered for growing in-equality. First, it reflects the divergent economicprospects of the well educated and the poorly ed-ucated discussed above (Yellen, 1998). Second,most observers have argued that increases in em-ployment among wives with higher earning hus-bands increased the advantage to families alreadyat the upper end of the income distribution. Thiswas in contrast to previous decades, when mostemployed wives were married to low-earning hus-bands, and their contributions helped enlarge theincomes in the middle of the income distribution(Farley, 1996; Levy, 1995). A recent paper byCancian and Reed (1999), however, suggests thatincreases in wives’ income over the last 25 years

have actually countered the trend toward risinginequality in family income. Finally, scholars ar-gue that increases in mother-headed householdshave contributed to growth in the lower portionof the income distribution (Eggebeen & Lichter,1991). These households have lower incomes be-cause they lack a second wage earner, becausewomen tend to earn less, on average, than men,and because some of these women are not em-ployed (Yellen).

Job Security

Throughout the 1990s, downsizing, rightsizing,and overseas job flight were staples of headlinenews, yet the unemployment rate declined ratherthan increased. In addition to being reflected inthe replacement of good jobs by poor jobs, indus-trial restructuring was reflected in the growth ofcontingent jobs and the reduction in job tenure.Reflective of the times, the Bureau of Labor Sta-tistics conducted the first assessment of contingentworkers in 1995. Approximately 5% of the em-ployed population qualified as contingent workersin 1995: They held jobs designed to be of shortduration without a contract (Hipple, 1998). Con-tingent workers tended to be disadvantaged inwork hours, earnings, and employer-provided ben-efits relative to their noncontingent counterparts,and many expressed a preference for noncontin-gent employment (Hipple).

A recent summary of employee tenure by theBureau of Labor Statistics (U.S. Bureau of LaborStatistics, 1998c) indicated that between 1983 and1998, median employee tenure declined modestlyfor men in all age groups (from approximately 4.1years to 3.8 years) and grew modestly for women(from 3.1 to 3.4 years). Declining tenure may re-flect either layoffs or positive job changes, asworkers take advantage of opportunities in a tightlabor market. Whether movement is voluntary orinvoluntary, it may negatively affect pay, benefits,and the seniority of individual workers, and lowerjob tenure may be associated with increasing feel-ings of economic insecurity.

Summary

The economic climate of the 1990s has been acontinuation of several long-term trends that haveresulted in strong overall economic growth andlower unemployment, but which have failed toeliminate and have even exacerbated long-termeconomic inequalities. Men who are young or


who have less than a college degree have expe-rienced considerable erosion in their incomes,both in absolute terms and relative to previous co-horts of young men and, perhaps as important,relative to women in their own cohort. Althoughimportant segments of the male population haveexperienced worsening income and worsening in-come trajectories, women’s earnings have in-creased steadily. These increases have often al-lowed families to maintain their standard of livingand avoid poverty despite men’s declining re-sources, but they challenge the breadwinner modelthat lingers in the normative fabric of family lifeand may signal more fundamental changes in howmen and women live together. Long-term demo-graphic trends in household composition have alsoplayed a role in affecting families’ economic well-being, increasing the number of dual-earner, high-income households, as well as the number ofmother-headed households facing economic hard-ship. The question the rest of this review address-es is whether these economic conditions havebeen demonstrated to have important effects onfamily life.

THE EFFECTS OF ECONOMIC CIRCUMSTANCE ON

FAMILY OUTCOMES

Marriage and Family Formation

Galvanized by sharply declining marriage rates,the growth in nonmarital cohabitation and child-bearing, a growing racial gap in marriage behav-ior, and by provocative hypotheses that attributethese trends to men’s or women’s economic be-havior, many excellent studies have addressed thelink between earnings, employment, and familyformation behavior. The work is divided into twocamps, depending on whether men’s or women’seconomic behavior is thought to have the strong-est effect. We review the theoretical and empiricalwork on each hypothesis and then summarize theirspecific implications for the three basic family for-mation options in the 1990s—marriage, cohabi-tation, and nonmarital childbearing.

The male-based hypothesis has several theo-retical roots, but its empirical prediction isstraightforward: Men with higher earnings, betterand more secure jobs, and stronger economicprospects are more likely to marry. This predic-tion is based on the notion that such men enjoygreater attractiveness in the marriage market be-cause of their greater ability to set up an indepen-dent household and to perform the conventional

breadwinning role (Becker, 1981). Because realwages for young men have declined in the lastdecade, this hypothesis has seemed a likely can-didate to explain declining marriage rates. In par-ticular, Wilson’s (1987) concept of the male mar-riageable pool index provided a persuasiveargument that declining opportunities for youngAfrican American men might explain the growingracial gap in marital behavior.

The female-based hypothesis is more complex.On the one hand, scholars such as Oppenheimer(1997b) have argued that, in a fashion parallel tomen, better earning, employed women make moreattractive partners and are more likely to marry.On the other hand, it has been argued that womenwho are able to support themselves through theirown work (or through welfare benefits) will feelless pressure to marry for economic need and maychoose not to marry or to form families throughcohabitations or nonmarital childbearing (Cherlin,1992). That this ‘‘independence effect’’ is hypoth-esized for women but not men rests on a tradingmodel that has been criticized as a ‘‘narrow (if notimpoverished) notion of what marriage is about’’(Oppenheimer, 1995) and implies that a gender-based division of labor is more important to themarital decision than are economies of scale, riskreduction, or maximization of economic re-sources.

Empirical Tests of the Male Hypothesis. Men’searnings and employment consistently have beendemonstrated to increase the likelihood of mar-riage (Lloyd & South, 1996; Oppenheimer, Kal-mijn, & Lim, 1997) and, specifically, of movingfrom cohabitation to marriage (Bumpass, Sweet,& Cherlin, 1991; Manning & Smock, 1995;Smock & Manning, 1997). It might have been ex-pected that male earning capacity would matterless as women’s earnings and labor force attach-ment increased; however, women—and especiallymothers—still find it reasonable to assess bread-winning potential in deciding whether to marry(Huinink & Mayer, 1995; Sorensen, 1995). Eth-nographic work on young unmarried mothers(Farber, 1990) confirms that neither young womennor their parents see any reason to marry a manwho is not working.

These statistically strong effects do not accountfor a substantial share of the percentage of youngmen who are married at any given time (Oppen-heimer, 1997b), for more than a small share of thedecline in proportion married (Koball, 1998; Mare& Winship, 1991; Testa & Krogh, 1995), or for


more than 20% of the racial gap in marriage(Lichter, LeClere, & McLaughlin, 1991; Lichter,McLaughlin, Kephart, & Landry, 1992; Lloyd &South, 1996; Raley, 1996).

The plausibility of the male earnings hypoth-esis and the consistent support for the effect ofincome and prospects on marriage rates acrosstime and race have lead to efforts to salvage thehypothesis that declining economic prospects foryoung men play a role in trends and in racial dif-ferentials. One possibility is that better measure-ment, including multidimensional assessment ofprospects, earnings, and stability, as well as em-ployment, might explain more of the period andrace effects (Danziger, 1995). Another possibilityis an interaction effect. As Wilson (1996) said,‘‘The weaker the norms against premarital sex,out-of-wedlock pregnancy, and nonmarital par-enthood, the more that economic considerationsaffect decisions to marry’’ (p. 97). He pointed out,for example, that in 1960, the man’s unemploy-ment or low income would not have been a goodenough reason not to legitimate a premarital con-ception but that it is reason enough today (e.g.,Farber, 1990). Because the stigma of nonmaritalsex and parenthood is weaker now than it used tobe (Thornton, 1989) and weaker among AfricanAmericans than Whites (Trent & South, 1992),this hypothesis seems plausible.

In support of the hypothesis of period inter-actions, Testa and Krogh (1995) demonstrated astrong interaction between cohort and employ-ment in their analysis of Black men’s odds of mar-rying the mother of their first child. Using a smallsample of inner-city Black men interviewed aspart of the Urban Poverty and Family Structurestudy, they show that employed men were 1.4times more likely to marry the mother of their firstchild than the unemployed in the cohort born inthe 1940s, but that this effect had grown to 7.4times in the 1960s cohort. Koball (1998), how-ever, found no cohort interactions in the effect ofmen’s employment on marriage timing.

The race-interaction hypothesis receives sup-port from a consistent set of findings that maleemployment, earnings, and prospects matter morein African American than White women’s deci-sions to marry (Bulcroft & Bulcroft, 1993; South1991). No studies have examined whether this istruly a race effect, however, or whether it appearsto be so because effects are stronger at lower in-come levels.

Empirical Results for the Female Hypothesis

A growing body of evidence suggests that womenwho are employed, who have higher earnings, andwho have higher earning potential are more likelyto marry compared with less economically advan-taged women. Not only are they generally morelikely to marry (McLaughlin & Lichter, 1997; Op-penheimer & Lewin, 1999), they are more likelyto marry before a birth if they become premari-tally pregnant (Manning & Landale, 1996) and toremarry after divorce (Smock, 1990). Further, at-titudinal evidence shows that men would prefer tomarry women with good earnings (South, 1991).

Evidence for the independence effect—thatwomen’s earnings, education, or employment re-duce their marriage rates—is weak. One need onlycompare the median incomes of single and mar-ried women (Table 1) to demonstrate that wom-en’s own earnings have not reduced the economicgains to marriage (Sorensen, 1995). Manning andSmock (1995) found that women’s economicprospects are weighted less strongly than aremen’s prospects in the decision to move from co-habitation to marriage, and two ecological studiesshow evidence that marriage rates are higher whenwomen’s labor market opportunities are worse(Cready, Fossett, & Kiecolt, 1997; Lichter et al.,1991). The best that can be said in the support ofthe independence effect is that longer school en-rollment does postpone marriage (Oppenheimer,1997b) and that the positive effects of women’searnings are not as large or consistent as for men’searnings (Sassler & Schoen, 1999; Smock & Man-ning, 1997).

Because the effect of women’s education, earn-ings, and labor force attachment on marriage aregenerally positive, women’s growing earnings andlabor force attachment logically cannot explaindeclining marriage behavior, nor is it very plau-sible that Black women’s labor force attachmentexplains their low marriage rates. In fact, paral-leling results for men, women’s income is moreimportant in predicting African American thanWhite marriage (Bulcroft & Bulcroft, 1993; Op-penheimer & Lewin, 1999; South 1991).

Effect on Nonmarital Family Formation

To the extent that positive earnings of both menand women encourage marriage, it seems logicalthat the same factors would be associated withlower likelihood of using nonmarital routes to


family formation, namely cohabitation and non-marital fertility.

In the case of nonmarital fertility, the evidenceis largely consistent with this expectation. Ado-lescents and young women with higher socialclass backgrounds, higher school attainment, andstable family economic histories have lower levelsof nonmarital births (Kahn & Anderson, 1992;Upchurch & McCarthy, 1990; Wu, 1996). A studyby Manning and Landale (1996) went further todemonstrate that not only are women with highereducations less likely to become pregnant whileunmarried, they are more likely to marry beforebirth in the event that they do become pregnant.The only study to address the issue of racial dif-ferences demonstrated that education has a muchstronger effect in dampening African Americanthan White women’s nonmarital fertility rates(South & Lloyd, 1992). None of these studies hasdirectly assessed the effect of the male partner’seconomic prospects on the likelihood of premar-ital pregnancy or nonmarital birth. One might hy-pothesize that the effect of male earnings on post-conception marriage would depend on women’salternative resources, including welfare.

The possibility that welfare specifically en-courages nonmarital childbearing and discouragesmarriage has been the focus of scholarly and pol-icy debate. Studies have documented a positiveassociation between the size of welfare paymentsand various measures of nonmarital childrearing(e.g., Lichter, McLaughlin, & Ribar, 1997) andalso demonstrated that unmarried mothers receiv-ing welfare are less likely to marry than are un-married mothers who are not on welfare (Bennett,Bloom, & Miller, 1995). Nevertheless, Moffitt(1998) concluded in a thorough review that thegenerally negative effect of welfare on marriagecannot explain long-term declines in marriagerates or racial differentials in nonmarriage.

How cohabitation is related to economic cir-cumstances is directly addressed in a study byClarkberg (1999), who assessed the comparativeeffects of men’s and women’s economic resourceson the likelihood of cohabiting rather than mar-rying. When contrasted to the alternative of sin-glehood, cohabitation is positively related tomen’s and women’s earnings but also positivelyrelated to job instability. Because women’s in-come is a stronger predictor of cohabitation thanof marriage, Clarkberg speculated that ‘‘higherearning women may prefer cohabitation as a wayto enjoy the benefits of couplehood without hav-ing to sacrifice their careers during the vulnerable

period of adulthood’’ (p. 964). Against this hy-pothesis, however, must be matched her findingsthat income relative to earnings is a strong andcomparable predictor of men’s and women’s like-lihood of marriage and has much smaller effectson cohabitation.

Summary

Overall, the evidence suggests that, althoughmen’s earnings continue to be somewhat more im-portant than women’s in family formation, the roleof economic factors in women’s and men’s familyformation decisions is remarkably similar. Bothmen and women with better educations, job pros-pects, and earnings are more likely to marry be-cause both are attractive commodities in a mar-riage market that seems to rely less on notions ofrole complementarity and more on economies ofscale, reduction of economic risk, and incomemaximization. Although improvements in wom-en’s earnings and economic independence mightbe expected to increase the likelihood that womenwho are better off will attempt to enjoy family lifethrough cohabitation or nonmarital fertility ratherthan by tying themselves to traditional genderroles still symbolized by marriage, studies in the1990s do not support this argument. It seems morelikely that women’s economic independence and,even more importantly, their growing commitmentto education and career building in early adult-hood may delay marriage and thus increase thelikelihood of cohabitation (Sassler & Schoen,1999). A full understanding of these trade-offswould require direct specification of alternatives,including both partners’ incomes and the abilityof women to translate economic resources intomarital equity.

MARITAL STABILITY

Theoretical arguments surrounding the effects ofeconomic circumstances on divorce generally par-allel those used to explain marriage rates. Thegender-neutral hypothesis is that lower income,job insecurity and instability, and unemploymentof either partner raise the risk of divorce by caus-ing the other to reevaluate their marriage marketbargain and by raising strain and tension. Thegendered hypothesis is similar to that adduced formarriage: Men’s employment, earnings, and pros-pects reduce divorce, whereas women’s employ-ment, earnings, and prospects increase divorce (anindependence effect).


Consistent evidence demonstrates a positive ef-fect of men’s earnings on marital stability (Hoff-man & Duncan, 1995; South & Lloyd, 1995), es-pecially when wives have no earnings (Ono,1998). Men’s unemployment doubles the risk ofdivorce in the first 5 years of marriage, whereaswife’s unemployment has no effect as long as herhusband is employed (Bumpass, Castro Martin, &Sweet, 1991). Recent trends in divorce rates, how-ever, cannot be explained by changing economiccircumstances. For example, Hoffman and Dun-can noted that whereas men’s rising real incomesbetween 1963 and 1971 should have led to a fallin divorce, the divorce rate rose. The effects ofmore recent changes in men’s economic prospectshave not been assessed yet in studies of divorce;nevertheless, both the gendered and the gender-neutral hypotheses lead to the prediction of agrowing class split in divorce as better prospectsshould reduce divorce among college-educatedmen and increase divorce among the less advan-taged.

Wives’ greater labor force attachment and thegrowing share of family income that wives con-tribute are two of the strongest economic trendsof this decade. Evidence regarding the effects ofthese trends on marital dissolution is mixed. Someevidence suggests that women’s higher earningsstabilize marriages (Hoffman & Duncan, 1995),although this positive effect can be counteractedby traditional gender-role ideology (Greenstein,1995; Sayer & Bianchi, 1998). Other evidenceshows that women’s wages and employment areassociated with a greater hazard of divorce (Hei-dermann, Suhomlinova, & O’Rand, 1998), es-pecially when husband’s earnings or total familyincome are low (Heckert, Nowak, & Snyder,1998; Ono, 1998). A study by Rogers (1999) lentsupport to the possibility of two-way causality byusing panel data to demonstrate that the path frommarital discord to earnings (through increased la-bor force attachment) was stronger than the pathfrom earnings to marital discord. Other studiesshow no effect of wife’s earnings on divorce(South & Lloyd, 1995; Tzeng & Mare, 1995). Per-haps the safest conclusion is that there is no con-sistent evidence that wives’ success as coprovidersreduces marital stability, although there are hintshere and in the family violence literature (e.g.,McCloskey, 1996) that problems arise whenwives’ employment and earnings are substantiallygreater than their husbands’ earnings.

The effect of income change on divorce hasbeen addressed in three studies. Tzeng and Mare

(1995) showed no effect of year-to-year changesin husband’s or wife’s income or weeks worked,but Weiss and Willis (1997) showed that increasesin either spouse’s income reduce the divorce haz-ard, and Yeung and Hofferth (1998) showed thatincome loss and especially loss of work hours in-crease the divorce hazard.

Two other measures of social class are consis-tently related to hazards of divorce. Both hus-bands’ and wives’ educations reduce odds of di-vorce (Bumpass et al., 1991; Teachman &Polonko, 1990; Tzeng & Mare, 1995) and homeownership deters divorce (Heiderman et al., 1998;Ono, 1998; Weiss & Willis, 1997) These findingssuggest that a broad conception of social class thatincludes wealth, education, earnings, security, anddebt would be a useful extension of current re-search.

Consistent findings that earnings and unem-ployment, particularly men’s, are related to di-vorce raise the question whether differential eco-nomic opportunity explains the racial gap indivorce. Ruggles (1997) claimed that increases infemale labor force participation and decreases inmale economic prospects fully account for racialdifferences in divorce rates between 1880 and1990 and in any given census year, concludingthat ‘‘it is possible . . . that the declining market-labor participation of black men since 1970 is thesingle most important source of rising marital in-stability for blacks’’ (p. 465). His results havebeen challenged on the basis of measurement,model specification, and murky causal order (Op-penheimer, 1997a; Preston, 1997), however, and itseems appropriate to consider this an open ques-tion. In an analysis of odds of divorce among theNLSY sample, for example, Tzeng and Mare(1995) concluded that little of the race differencein divorce could be explained by the very com-plete set of economic variables they investigated(including level of, changes in, and differences be-tween husbands and wives in income, education,and labor force attachment).

The consistent finding that economic factorsare more central to African American than Whitemarriage decisions raises the question aboutwhether earnings and employment stability alsoplay a stronger role in marital instability withinAfrican American families. Partial support for thisexpectation is provided by Yeung and Hofferth(1998), who showed that the effect of job loss onthe hazard of divorce is 2 to 3 times stronger inAfrican American couples than in White couples.


MARITAL QUALITY

Although scholars in earlier decades were con-cerned about the effect of low income and un-employment on marital quality and family process(e.g., Komarovsky, 1940), direct examinations ofincome, employment, and wealth effects havebeen relatively scarce in the last decade comparedwith examinations using subjective measures ofeconomic pressure. Subjective assessments of fi-nancial worry have been shown consistently tocorrelate negatively with marital happiness in gen-eral American samples (Conger et al., 1990; Fox& Chancey, 1998), as well as in African Americansamples (Broman & Forman, 1997; Clark-Nicolas& Gray-Little, 1991). This relationship is elabo-rated most thoroughly in panel studies from theIowa State project fielded by Conger and associ-ates (e.g., Conger & Elder, 1994; Conger et al.,1990), which show that economic pressure in-creases husband’s hostility and wife’s depressionand, through these paths, reduces both husband’sand wife’s marital happiness.

The few studies that have addressed incomedirectly report mixed results. Rogers and Amato(1997) demonstrated that lower income fromyoung husbands is a significant factor in explain-ing why a current cohort of early marriages re-ports more marital problems than did an early co-hort, but direct examinations of the link betweenincome and measures of marital quality show noeffect (Amato & Rogers, 1997). A positive effectof income is reported by Brody and associates(1994), who found that higher per capita incomeswere associated with higher marital happiness andlower marital conflict in their small sample of ru-ral African Americans. This is counterbalanced bytwo other studies of African American marriages,however, that report weak or no effect of familyincome on measures of marital quality or prob-lems (Broman & Forman, 1997; Clark-Nicolas &Gray-Little, 1991). Taken together, this is not astrong case for income as an important determi-nant of marital happiness.

Only a few studies have examined economicindicators other than family income. In their smallTennessee study, Fox and Chancey (1998) showedthat husband’s job insecurity has a significant pos-itive effect on wives’ reports of marital conflictand thoughts of divorce, controlling for incomeand subjective economic well-being. Interestingly,wives’ job insecurity and job instability also havepositive effects on husbands’ reports of maritalconflict. The Iowa State project includes an ad-

mirable array of economic measures, including as-set-to-debt ratios, job security, and unemploy-ment, as well as family income-to-needs ratios.Although they would seem to have the best op-portunity to assess the total effect of economiccircumstances on marital quality, they have mod-eled the effects of all objective economic indica-tors as indirect through a measure of economichardship, and none of their reports assesses totaleffects.

Where reports offer coefficients for both ob-jective and subjective economic indicators, sub-jective indicators are more strongly correlatedwith marital outcomes than are objective measuresof income or employment (e.g., Clark-Nicolas &Gray-Little, 1991; Fox & Chancey, 1998). Thisstronger effect arises in part because of commonmethod bias (Lorenz, Conger, Simons, Whitbeck,& Elder, 1991), but also because subjective hard-ship is more proximate than structural measures.

Given evidence that income and employmentare related to divorce and that perceived economichardship predicts marital quality, it is difficult toaccept weak and null effects of income on maritalquality at face value. Qualitative research certain-ly supports a strong association between economicinsecurity and marital trouble (Rubin, 1994). It ispossible that negative effects are concentrated atlower income levels (threshold effects) or that in-come interacts with other stressors, such as un-employment. Certainly, consistent findings showthat spousal violence is associated with low in-come and unemployment (Strauss, 1990). Further,unemployment ranks as one of the most stressfullife events (Catalano, 1991), and we would expectit to have negative effects on marital qualitythrough depression, stress, and hostility. If theIowa State project were to unpack their broadrange of economic measures and examine theirtotal as well as indirect effects, we would expectto see stronger effects of objective economic con-ditions on marital quality than have been previ-ously demonstrated.

A second issue is raised by the disjuncture be-tween studies showing no effect of income onmarital quality in African American families andfindings showing that low income and unemploy-ment have stronger effects on the divorce hazardamong African American than White couples.Broman and Forman (1997) revived the idea that‘‘protective resources within African Americancommunities . . . . such as cohesive extended fam-ilies, spiritual beliefs, and ethnic coping orienta-tions’’ (p. 243) provide some protection, but this


argument is challenged both by the divorce dataand by direct examinations of social supportmechanisms (e.g., Roschelle, 1997). An alterna-tive hypothesis is that economic issues carry rel-atively more weight than relationship quality is-sues in African American divorce decisions, ahypothesis that can only be tested in studies thatcombine sociodemographic variables with mea-sures of marital happiness in large mixed samples.

Child Outcomes

Much of the research on child outcomes and par-ents’ economic circumstances focuses on povertyand is reviewed in Seccombe (this issue). Becausethese studies bear on the larger issue of how eco-nomic circumstances affect families, however, wereview this work briefly.

A variety of studies using different data setsdocument positive effects of family income on abroad array of child outcome measures, includingchild health (Dawson, 1991), internalizing and ex-ternalizing problems (Hanson, McLanahan, &Thomson, 1997), and school attainment andachievement (Duncan, Yeung, Brooks-Gunn, &Smith, 1998). To a significant extent, these find-ings regarding income (or income-to-needs) havebeen replicated using other measures of socialclass. For example, occupational status and com-plexity (Menaghan & Parcel, 1991), assets (Ax-inn, Duncan, & Thornton, 1997), education (Day,1992), debt (Hanson et al.), and unemployment(McLoyd, Epstein Jayaratne, Ceballo, & Borquez,1994) have been shown to be related to child out-comes for both single-parent and two-parent fam-ilies (Hanson et al.; McLoyd et al.).

Some of the strongest arguments for the effectof income on children’s outcomes are indirect.McLanahan and Sandefur (1994) argued that in-come accounts for nearly half of the substantialdeficits on outcomes such as school performance,high school graduation, teen pregnancy, andyoung-adult idleness that they document for chil-dren raised by single mothers. Other studies usingthe same analytic strategy, however, show weakereffects of income (e.g., Sandefur, McLanahan, &Wojtkiewicz, 1992).

In addition, a substantial set of research, large-ly from the Iowa State project (but also seeMcLoyd et al., 1994; Takeuchi, Williams, &Adair, 1991), has demonstrated the ways in whichsubjective economic pressure affects the quality ofparenting, children’s psychological well-being,and finally children’s outcomes, such as internal-

izing and externalizing problems and school at-tainment (Simons, Whitbeck, Melby, & Wu,1994). Summarizing how economic pressure re-verberates through the family system, Simons andassociates (pp. 219–220) noted that

parents who are under high economic strain areliable to be preoccupied and minimally involvedin the parenting role until serious or flagrantchild misbehavior jars them into action. Suchtransgressions are likely to demand a harsh re-sponse, so that the pattern of parenting displayedis inconsistent and explosive.

Simons and associates concluded that econom-ic pressure jeopardizes the child’s psychologicaland behavioral outcomes.

The most comprehensive examination of eco-nomic effects on child outcomes is the project or-ganized by Duncan and Brooks-Gunn (1997), whocommissioned a dozen research groups (includingmost of those cited in the two preceding para-graphs) to test the effects of family income on abroad array of child outcome measures using sep-arate data sets but a common model. The consen-sus from this comparative project is that incomeitself has surprisingly narrow effects on child out-comes. They concluded that family income hasimportant and consistent effects on ability andachievement but that income effects on behavior,mental health, and physical health are narrowerand less consistent. Income effects are smaller inthe studies that focus on adolescence than thosethat focus on early childhood. As one might ex-pect, however, premarital births and college atten-dance are more sensitive to family income in ad-olescence than in early childhood (Duncan et al.,1998). They interpreted the results as showing thatincrements in income at and around the povertylevel matter more than income differences higherin the continuum for most child outcomes and that‘‘In no case did the evidence here suggest thatincome transfers alone would produce a dramaticimprovement in physical health, mental health, orin behavioral development of children’’ (Duncan& Brooks-Gunn, p. 608).

The conclusion that ‘‘income transfers alone’’would not make a dramatic difference in chil-dren’s health, behavior, or well-being and the pro-vocative book by Mayer (1997), What MoneyCan’t Buy, raise important questions about mea-surement and conceptualization. Neither Marxisttheories of class nor mainstream theories of socialclass suggest that income alone, much less incomecontrolling for education and other measures of


socioeconomic status, is the critical variable mea-suring social inequality. Policy-related studiessuch as Mayer’s and those in the Duncan andBrooks-Gunn volume are designed to assess theeffect of a single variable that is relatively easilymanipulated by available public policy instru-ments (i.e., family income), rather than to assessthe costs of disadvantage. If the latter were thefocus, then broader and more process-orientedmeasures, such as education and labor markets,would need to be assessed. As the authors of oneof the contributions to the Duncan and Brooks-Gunn volume concluded, ‘‘overly economisticthinking may have diverted researchers from othermajor sources, dimensions, and consequences ofsocial inequality’’ (Hauser & Sweeney, 1997).Nevertheless, the finding that income alone hassuch small effects outside of status attainment isan important contribution. Rather than undercut-ting arguments for various government programs,however, it may be a testament to the effectivenesswith which ‘‘government policies . . . ensure thatpoor children get basic necessities most of thetime’’ (Mayer, p. 143).

DISCUSSION

Analysis of economic trends in the 1990s docu-ments general prosperity and growing medianearnings, particularly of women and the collegeeducated. At the same time, we have documentedremarkably persistent poverty and stagnating ordeclining wages for young men and the poorlyeducated. Both of these economic circumstanceshave been implicated in marriage rates and chil-dren’s educational attainment and, to a lesser ex-tent, in divorce rates, marital quality, and generalchild well-being. Several important issues remainunresolved.

Measuring Economic Well-Being and Hardship

Objective Indicators. Theoretical treatments ofeconomic inequality usually refer to a multidi-mensional set of indicators including education,occupational prestige, employment, employmentsecurity, wealth, and income. For the most part,however, family research has tended to rely on anarrow subset of these indicators, often using onlyeducation and family income and sometimes onlyincome (Smith & Graham, 1995). This may leadto underestimates of the true effect of class in-equality on family outcomes, such as that dis-cussed in regard to child outcomes. Our focus on

income may well be driven by the narrowness ofpolicy options feasible in today’s political climate,but it is possible that a broader set of scholarlywork would provide the impetus for broadeningour policy scope beyond minor income redistri-butions to consider factors such as job quality andsecurity and public education, among others (Dan-ziger, 1996; Hout et al., 1996).

Level of Analysis. Although family studies in the1990s for the most part focused on individual eco-nomic circumstances, an important tradition em-phasized larger social ecologies, including the im-portance of the opportunity structure andeconomic well-being of the communities in whichfamilies live. In particular, the high levels of job-lessness in the central cities, especially among mi-norities and the less well educated, and the grow-ing segregation of rich and poor have beensuggested to exacerbate both individual advantageand disadvantage (Farley, 1996). The economicwell-being of the community has been addressedin studies of the marriage market (e.g., Cready etal., 1997; Lichter et al, 1991) and family violence(Miles-Doan, 1998), and the effects of social cap-ital of communities on children’s outcomes hasbeen addressed in several studies (e.g., Fursten-berg & Hughes, 1995), but research on the mainand interactive effects of community economieson family outcomes remains undeveloped. The re-view of families and local ecologies by Burtonand Jarrett found in this issue addresses some ofthese issues.

Subjective measures. The Iowa State project pro-vides the most detailed rationale for using subjec-tive measures of economic hardship. The concep-tual framework that underlies their work is thatobjective economic measures—such as debt-to-as-set ratios, income, and unemployment—have in-direct effects on family members’ psychologicalstates and on family processes and outcomesthrough the intervening variable of economicpressure (Conger & Elder, 1994). In the IowaState model, economic pressure is a latent variablereflected in three domains of content: assessmentof whether income is sufficient for regular ex-penses, the extent to which the family membershave enough money to buy the kinds of consumergoods they would like to have, and a checklist ofeconomic adjustments (such as borrowing or go-ing into debt) that families might have had tomake because of financial need. The focus onfeelings of economic pressure instead of on ob-


jective economic circumstances is both a strengthand a weakness. It provides indirect evidenceabout other dimensions of class analysis such asconsumer class and class identification by tappingissues of relative deprivation and insecurity. Itprovides a partial window through which to viewhow American families feel about their prospectsfor the future and the growing inequality docu-mented in Table 1. As an individual social psy-chological variable, it is used most often to ex-plain other individual social psychologicalattributes, such as happiness, depression, and hos-tility. The disadvantage of this focus is that it con-tributes to a psychologizing of class issues inplace of more structural analyses of how class af-fects life chances.

For those concerned with the effects of eco-nomic transformation and social class on the fam-ily, it would be useful to present alternative mod-els in which both the total and the indirect effectsof income, wealth, and employment insecuritywere assessed. It would also be helpful to examineinteraction effects between objective and subjec-tive indicators. Many more families are in eco-nomic distress than are in poverty (Fox & Chan-cey, 1998; Takeuchi et al., 1991), and it would beuseful to understand the degree to which the neg-ative effects of economic stress are limited tothose who face objective hardship or are experi-enced equally by those with incomes of $60,000a year but who have aspirations suitable for$90,000.

Developing a Life-Course Understanding ofEconomic Effects

Family income and economic status are surpris-ingly volatile (Duncan, 1984; Duncan et al.,1998), but only a handful of studies examinebroad patterns of economic change and their ef-fects on family outcomes. A partial exception isYeung and Hofferth (1998), who used the PanelStudy of Income Dynamics to assess families’ ex-periences with job loss and income loss over 15years following the birth of a child. Defining sig-nificant income loss as a 50% decline in income-to-needs ratio and significant work reduction as a20% decrease in husband’s annual work hoursplus an unemployment episode, they reported thatone half of all children’s families experienced amajor economic setback before the childrenreached age 15. Although economic setbacks weremost common among those in the poorest quartile(more than 75% of poor families experienced at

least one of these setbacks), no group was im-mune: Approximately one third of White families,as well as African American families in the high-est quartile, experienced either significant incomeor work loss. Income loss was associated withgreater residential mobility and increased proba-bility of divorce or separation.

We have a growing number of national studieswith multiple waves, such as the Panel Study ofIncome Dynamics, the National Survey of Fami-lies and Households, the National LongitudinalStudies, and the Marital Instability Over the LifeCourse project, that would allow us to track moredirectly the economic fortunes of families andtheir consequences. It is possible that broad-basedmeasurement of economic trajectories would helpexplain racial differentials—not only in marriageand divorce behavior, but also in child out-comes—better than has been possible with one-time measures or year-to-year changes.

Which Comes First? Economic Condition orFamily Structure?

Much has been made of the poverty of single-mother households (e.g., McLanahan & Sandefur,1994). One outcome is that policy discussions andthe media often ‘‘blame the victim’’ by suggestingthat the poverty of single-mother householdscould be solved simply by marriage. Nevertheless,we know that nonmarital births are more likelyamong those whose parents have lower educations(Kahn & Anderson, 1992) and low and decliningincomes (Duncan et al., 1998; Wu, 1996) andamong young women with few attractive alter-native prospects (Upchurch & McCarthy, 1990).Poverty among African American, single-motherfamilies is especially likely to be ‘‘reshuffled pov-erty’’ (McLanahan & Sandefur). Two-thirds ofBlack women who were poor after divorce werealso poor when married (Bane, 1986)—and prob-ably many were poor before marriage. This re-search focusing on the extent to which class andsocial class affect who ends up in which familystructures has been overshadowed by the researchon the consequences of family structures, and theresult is a biased public discussion. We would en-hance the quality of policy discourse if our re-search gave greater emphasis to the determinantsof family structure.

Understanding the Interaction of Race andDisadvantage on Family Outcomes

Large racial differences in income and unemploy-ment are a persistent feature of the American class


picture. Aside from Ruggles’ (1997) claim thatthese differences explain the racial difference indivorce, the evidence we have assessed does notprovide a strong case for attributing observed dif-ferences in family outcomes to different structuresof opportunity. This raises the old issue of wheth-er ameliorating processes of social support in Af-rican American families somehow counterbalancegreater economic risk (Broman & Forman, 1997).Alternatively, if economic effects are nonlinear,simple main effects models may underestimate theextent to which earnings and employment explainracial differences. Another possibility is that usinga wider variety of economic measures (e.g., jobsecurity and stability, career versus dead-end jobs)or more dynamic measures might show strongereffects (Danziger, 1995). Because race is arguablythe defining and most persistent inequality inAmerica and because of the strong linkage amongrace, marriage, and economic well-being, this is-sue deserves more analysis.

Integrating Women’s Role as Providers IntoFamily Models

Research in the last decade suggested that rolecomplementarity models of marriage are less ef-fective than coprovider models in predicting mar-riage, divorce, and marital quality. Women andmen are increasingly similar in their economicroles, and class is replacing gender as a majordeterminant of women’s economic condition(Huinink & Mayer, 1995). Growing equalities inearnings and labor force attachment raise ques-tions about the extent to which they are paralleledby growing equalities in the domestic division oflabor, the internal division of resources within thefamily, the use of power and coercion in the fam-ily, and the socialization of boys and girls.

CONCLUSION

One of the major economic trends of the 1990s,women’s growing contribution to family income,appears to have had largely positive effects onfamily outcomes. Rather than seeing a decreasedimportance of men’s earnings on family outcomes,however, we see significant positive effects ofboth women’s and men’s earnings and employ-ment on marriage, marital stability, marital qual-ity, and child outcomes. Many questions remainunresolved, however, including the effects onfamilies of persistent racial inequalities in eco-nomic opportunity and a growing disparity be-

tween rich and poor. For the past 2 decades,American families in the middle of the incomedistribution masked men’s stagnating wages by re-ducing the number of children and increasingwives’ labor force participation (Levy, 1995).With these strategies already implemented, eco-nomic inequality may seem more visible andproblematic in the future. Will Americans, like theJapanese and many Europeans, cut fertility evenfurther, to an average of little over one child? Hasmarriage, like a Lexus, become an obvious markerof social class? Or is marriage a form of capitalthat the well off have used to increase their ad-vantage? Questions such as these suggest fruitfulfields for further research and a continued vitalintersection between the family and social in-equality.

NOTE

We appreciate the comments of Alan Booth, Paul Ama-to, and Bob Schoen on earlier drafts of this manuscript.

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Documents

Economic Circumstances and Family Outcomes: A Review of the 1990s