This year’s most talked-about wedding featured a bride who earns far more than her husband. Pop superstar Taylor Swift earned at least four times as much as NFL star Travis Kelce last year and her net worth is much higher than his. This reflects a broader social trend. Marriages in which the wife earns more than the husband have become increasingly common in the United States, rising from about 5% of married couples in 1972 to roughly 16% today. The trend is likely to continue as young women outnumber men in universities and increasingly dominate many professional occupations.
For decades, sociologists and other scholars predicted that this economic shift would gradually erode the traditional male-breadwinner norm. As women became more economically successful, they argued, people generally would become more accepting of role reversals within the household, and the greater instability historically observed among female-breadwinner couples would disappear. According to this view, those higher separation rates were largely the product of social disapproval and conflict arising from violations of traditional gender norms.
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