Still, Bennetts and her supporters argue, a woman who does not work fulltime, uninterrupted over the course of her life puts her family at risk even if her husband doesn’t divorce her. “Some [women] are going to have husbands who become ill or incapacitated, or who die early. And many are going to have husbands who lose their jobs at one point or another,” she warned on The Today Show.
Ignoring for a moment the obvious solution of life and long-term care insurance, she seems to have point. Yet bankruptcy data shows that in reality the opposite is true. Far from offering them a buffer against rough economic winds, women in dual-income families are more likely to face financial ruin than those in single-earner families.
Two-income couples have about a 27 percent greater probability of filing for bankruptcy than families that rely on a single paycheck. The reason for this is simple--where dual-earner families are maxed out as far as possible income and consequently have no safety net in the event of illness or unemployment, single-earner families do. Should the worst happen, the wife can return to the workforce and make up for some or all of her husband’s lost income.
“The two-income family is a more deeply leveraged economic unit, with more of its income committed to a relentless list of fixed expenses, leaving them with less flexibility in times of trouble,” wrote Harvard Law Professor, Elizabeth Warren in The Two Income Trap, a book Bennetts cites but completely misrepresents.. After years of researching bankruptcy, she concluded, “Families in the new economy, with all adults—both mom and dad—in the workforce, face much greater risks than their one-paycheck counterparts.”
Not every woman will want or be able to eschew work completely, but it is clear that a fulltime job is not the panacea of protection that feminists suggest. Sometimes the most economically sensible thing a mother can do—other than making sure that her family has adequate insurance coverage—is follow her heart home. |