Achieving the American Dream doesn’t look the way it used to.
Over the years, societal and labor market changes, along with higher prices for everything from health care to higher education, have chipped away at the traditional makeup of the American family, which relied on a singular breadwinner to attain financial security.
For starters, fewer couples are married compared to a generation ago and among married couples, both spouses are more likely to work, according to the Pew Research Center — by choice and necessity.
“We used to be in this golden age where you could own a home, a car, and get by on a single income — that is a bygone era,” Bankrate’s economic analyst Sarah Foster told CNBC.
Today, it often takes two working parents to afford a middle-class lifestyle, studies show. Even six-figure earners in the U.S. said one income feels “nearly impossible” to live on, according to a recent survey by The Harris Poll.
In about half of all married-couple families, both spouses were employed, according to 2024 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In families with children, two-thirds of all households had both spouses working outside the home.
“Where there was a time in the U.S. when a married couple, with children, could get by with a single-wage earner in the house, those days are mostly vestiges of the past,” according to Mark Hamrick, Bankrate’s senior economic analyst.
Household expenses have soared
Inflation and surging costs for expenses including child care, college, auto loans, homes and rent have created an “affordability challenge,” Hamrick said.
Across the country, health insurance premiums for family coverage have jumped more than 25% since 2020, outpacing inflation. Both the cost of child care and college tuition have increased more than 5% year after year over the same period, also outpacing inflation and other household expenses, research shows.
At the same time, a housing shortfall has helped push rents and mortgage prices far beyond what a single earner may be able to afford.
“Because the costs have been rising so much for so many families, we know the cost of child care, the cost of health care, the need to be able to earn more money just to keep up, necessitated more hours per family,” said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank.
Workplace dynamics have changed
Significant changes in the workplace have also made it more difficult to rely on one income. “There’s been a fracturing of both job security and a sense of belonging that workers have in the workplace,” Hamrick said.
More workers are now part of the gig economy, which means they are less likely to have a sustained, predictable income or workplace benefits, he said, eroding long-term job stability: “If you are part of the gig economy, there’s a tremendous amount of insecurity.”
Fewer gig workers — and even full-time employees — have a traditional pension and are increasingly responsible for funding their own retirement plans.
“For workers without predictable hours or benefits, even a full-time schedule isn’t enough to guarantee stable income or support a household on one paycheck,” said Scott Winship, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative public policy think tank.
Increasing opportunities for women
But there aren’t just economic pressures at play.
The shift to dual-earner households is also a reflection of the increasing opportunities for women and the elimination of some gender barriers, according to Winship.
Women have been making significant strides in their education and careers and are working as much, if not more, than their male counterparts, many studies also show.
In a growing share of opposite-sex marriages, women have become breadwinners, or outearn their husbands, according to the Pew Research Center.
“Women have a lot more opportunities than they used to have, and so they’re working longer and they’re working for higher pay,” Winship said. That has changed the expectations of what a “middle-class lifestyle” entails today, he said.
— CNBC lead producer Charlotte Morabito contributed to this report.
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