Nearly 3 in 4 American Families with Children Rely on Mothers' Earnings

Highlights

Nearly 3 in 4 American Families with Children Rely on Mothers' Earnings

Washington, DC—Three in four American families with young children rely on a mother’s earnings. A new analysis from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) finds that regardless of whether mothers are married or single, mothers have substantially lower earnings than fathers, with a slightly narrower gap for married mothers. Married mothers earned 73.3 percent of married fathers’ earnings ($44,000, compared with $60,000), while single mothers earned 70.7 percent of what single fathers earned ($31,100, compared with $44,000) in 2015. The analysis was released on Mothers Equal Pay Day, the day symbolizing how far into the year that mothers must work to earn what fathers earned in the previous year.

The analysis also found that, in American families with children, dual-earning married couples (51.0 percent of families with children) were the most common household type, while households headed by a single mother with earnings were the second most common type (19.7 percent). In all, almost three quarters (73.9 percent) of the 33 million American families with children included a working mother.

“Mothers work, just as fathers do,” said IWPR Program Director for Employment & Earnings Ariane Hegewisch. “But they earn much less for their efforts. Discrimination and the lack of a proper work-family policy infrastructure increase inequality and harm not only mothers, but also their children, partners, and communities.”

In 2015, all mothers’ earned $16,000 less than fathers for full-time, year-round work ($40,000 at the median for mothers, compared with $56,000 for fathers), a gender wage gap of 28.4 percent, substantially higher than the gender wage gap for working women overall at 20.4 percent.

“The effect of this earnings inequity accumulates over a lifetime and into retirement. Rather than formulating tax plans and government budgets that would exacerbate inequality, policymakers should focus on improving the economic fortunes of many American families by addressing gender inequality in earnings,” said IWPR President Heidi Hartmann, Ph.D.