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More women bringing home baconFebruary 29, 2000 BY AMY GOLDSTEIN WASHINGTON POST WASHINGTON--Susan Goldmark works on energy projects for the World Bank, putting in 11-hour days, shuttling to Latin America and drawing a salary in the top 2 percent of Americans' income. Her husband, Kai Bird, spends his days writing in the study of their home here. Praised as his biographies have been, Bird says, "my wife will be quick to point out that they don't sell." After 25 years of marriage, including 18 in which she has supplied most of their money while he has produced three books, "I might have a best seller, and I'd still not be able to pay back the years of dependency on her." Their lopsided economic relationship once would have been rare. But Bird has noticed that several of his male friends also have wives or girlfriends with paychecks bigger than their own. Economists have noticed the trend, too. Nearly one in three working wives nationwide now is paid more than her husband, compared with fewer than one in five in 1980. The trend is particularly pronounced among the most highly educated women, nearly half of whom have incomes higher than their spouses, according to the most recent federal data. The rising incomes of wives coincide with changes in educational trends and their taking occupations that were dominated by men a generation ago. The effects of these changes have been so widespread that roughly 30 percent of working wives from their 20s to their 60s are paid more than their husbands, according to an analysis of data from the most recent federal population survey, conducted by Richard Freeman, a Harvard economist. The size of spouses' paychecks can be a delicate matter, because money, research has shown, traditionally has been an engine of economic power in many marriages, giving the biggest breadwinner the greatest say over family financial decisions. But now that main breadwinners more often are women, there is evidence they are not assuming the same power. When men earn the most money in a family, research has shown, they typically consider their careers more important than their wives'. When women earn the most, on the other hand, they usually say their careers are "equally important" as their husbands'. Marriages in which wives bring in the most income are not significantly more likely to end in divorce. But Kathy Meyer, director of the Business Enterprise Trust, a national organization based in Palo Alto, Calif., that promotes corporate responsibility, says that the "financial disparity" with her ex-husband was "a major reason our relationship did not survive." Her higher income "was so unusual at that time," said Meyer, 51, who married in 1971 and, together with her husband, enrolled at Stanford University a few years later to get a master's degree in business administration. Armed with their degrees, he ventured into low-wage nonprofit work, she into well-paid corporate jobs. "Consciously, we were feeling, `Well, aren't we the pioneers?' " she said. But he was troubled by the teasing of his friends, and she felt she was shouldering too much of the burden. "We underestimated how we had been brought up and [the power of] traditional roles." Copyright © The Sun-Times Company |
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