Married couples: work and income patterns, (EXCERPT), Monthly Labor Review Online, December 1983

Married couples:
work and income patterns

Howard Hayghe

Today's married-couple families—whether white, black, or Hispanic—supply the U.S. labor force with most of its workers. By the turn of the century—a little less than two decades from now—most of these men, women, and children will still be alive. A clearer understanding of the current status of work patterns in white and minority families permits valuable insights into the nature of work and the family and needs of the family in the closing years of this century.

This article deals with white, black, and Hispanic married-couple families, highlighting their current work-income profiles and exploring briefly some of the major differences. More than 8 of 10 white families are married couples, as are 5 of 10 black families and 7 of 10 Hispanic families. Together these families supply about 71 percent of the Nation's workers. The data used were obtained primarily from supplemental questions to the March 193 Current Population Survey.¹

This excerpt is from an article published in the December 1983 issue of the Monthly Labor Review. The full text of the article is available in Adobe Acrobat's Portable Document Format (PDF). See How to view a PDF file for more information.

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Footnotes

1 The Current Population Survey (CPS), conducted for the Bureau of Labor Statistics by the Bureau of the Census, is a monthly sample survey of some 60,000 households in the United States. The information obtained from this survey relates to the employment status of persons 16 years old and over in the civilian noninstitutional population. In the March survey, taken each year, supplemental information is obtained annually regarding earnings and income as well as the work experience of individuals in the prior year. Data on persons from the March surveys are tabulated by marital and family status.

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