A short conversational transcript from a December 17, 2023 YouTube episode by Connor Beaton discussing the rise to ~42% of U.S. households where women are the primary earners (up from ~9–11% in the 1970s). The speakers consider causes (educational shifts, fewer men in college), possible future trends (projection toward >50%), and social effects on relationship roles and expectations, including that both sexes increasingly expect financial stability from partners. The conversation also cites rising housing cost multipliers as a driver for dual incomes.
Chapters
I'm pretty sure the stat is that 42% of American households, women are the primary breadwinner. Women are out earning their male counterparts in 42% of households in the United.
States or where in the United States.
Yeah, yeah, in the U.S. and so that's a massive population. Population. Right. And it's gone up from the 70s. I think in the 70s it was like 9 to 11%. And now we're at 42%. And with the trends of less men going to college, by 2030, we're going to have two women graduating for every one man. That puts them in certain career trajectories. I think it'll probably swing over 50%. Where in over 50% of American households, women will be out earning men probably within the next decade or so. That's just a guess, but I do think that it's an interesting conversation. I'm not saying that there's specific outcomes. I think I've had quite a few men reach out over the years being like, oh, my wife out earns me four times or three times, and how do I still provide? How do I find a place? And it's like, well, you can still lead, you can still provide, you can still protect, you can still do all these things that are core to what you want to contribute to a relationship and, and maybe not be the primary earner. Like that's still possible. I think what is incorrect is like just putting so much emphasis on money, just like putting so much emphasis on beauty. It's like when we just become myopic like that and our selection preferences go all the way down to like, this one fucking area.
I think those are likely not the people that are tuning into this podcast and having these types of, of conversations. So.
Well, I could just tell you what I, what I witness in the thousands of women who I work with, and that is for the women who date men, they just want a man who has financial stability and that they don't care if he makes more money than her. This is the vast majority of them, not all of them. They want a man with financial stability, you know, and that I think is realistic, because I think that's a realistic expectation. But here's interesting, another thing that's interesting. I mean, we could, this could. This topic, we could explore this for hours. Because men now are expecting financial stability from a woman. And in the past, it never used to be that. It used to be, you know, I want to provide or I don't have that expectation, but it's going both ways. So I'm seeing a lot of men expecting women to work, to contribute financially and to have financial stability. And more men are wanting women with purpose.
That's what I'm seeing too.
I think there are. There are a lot more men who are wanting women to contribute financially because I do think it's, you know, it's just statistically and financially is so much harder to have the mortgage. You know, I mean, it's. Yeah, we don't need to go into the financial part of it. That's probably a different conversation, but because I've been reading a lot of the data on that front, you know, like, for example, in the 1920s, a house was approximately 2.3 times the annual income of an individual. And now it's 9.4 times the average income of an individual. So just purchasing a house is exponentially more harder for the average American to do. And so the cost of living is just much higher. And so I think most people, in order to have a family and have kids, like, it's almost a necessity that both people are working.
