Changing Earnings Composition in Israeli-Palestinian Households: The Emergence of the Dual-Earner Family

Abstract

During the past 40 years, women’s labor force participation has increased dramatically in most industrialized countries. Paid employment rose in particular among married women. The rise in wives’ economic activity markedly changed the traditional organization of the family, with households in which the man is the sole provider becoming a small minority (Bianchi et al. 1999; Spain and Bianchi 1996; Stier and Mandel 2009; Waite and Nielsen 2001). Since 1960, the number of dual-earner families has increased in most industrialized countries. In the United States, for example, the traditional sole-breadwinner family was in the majority until the early 1970s, when the labor force participation rate of married women increased substantially. At that time about a quarter of all married couples maintained a two-earner family, in which both the husband and the wife participated in the market on a full-time basis. This type of family became the model of all couple-headed families (38 percent) in 1985 and by the end of the century characterized almost half of all families headed by married couples (Waite and Nielsen 2001: 30–31). Waite and Nielsen state that the rise of the dual-worker family is “ … the most dramatic, far reaching change affecting women, men, and families …” during the last three decades of the twentieth century (Waite and Nielsen 2001: 35).