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Demography (2015) 52:17971823 DOI 10.1007/s13524-015-0440-z
Steven Ruggles1
Published online: 28 October 2015# Population Association of America 2015
Abstract This article proposes explanations for the transformation of American families over the past two centuries. I describe the impact on families of the rise of male wage labor beginning in the nineteenth century and the rise of female wage labor in the twentieth century. I then examine the effects of decline in wage labor opportunities for young men and women during the past four decades. I present new estimates of a precipitous decline in the relative income of young men and assess its implications for the decline for marriage. Finally, I discuss explanations for the deterioration of economic opportunity and speculate on the impact of technological change on the future of work and families.
Keywords Marriage . Family. Wage labor. Relative income
Introduction
Before the nineteenth century, most families were organized according to patriarchal tradition. Household heads owned and controlled the means of production, and their wives and children were obliged to provide the unpaid labor needed to sustain family enterprises. Masters of the household had a legal right to command the obedience of their wives and childrenas well as any servants or slavesand to use corporal punishment to correct disobedience (Coontz 2005; Cott 2009; Hartog 2000; Mintz and Kellogg 1988; Shammas 2002; Siegel 1996; Stanley 2002). Over the past two centuries, this patriarchal family system collapsed, as household heads lost control over their sons, wives, and servants.
* Steven Ruggles [email protected]
1 Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota, 50 Wiley Hall, Minneapolis,
MN 55455, USA
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Web End = Patriarchy, Power, and Pay: The Transformation of American Families, 18002015
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Fig. 1 Percentage of persons aged 65 or older residing in multigenerational families: United States, 18502013. Multigenerational families defined according to the IPUMS MULTGEN variable. Source: Ruggles et al. (2015)
The waning of patriarchy was accompanied by a shift toward simpler and more unstable families. Intergenerational coresidence, once a standard phase of the life course, is now rare...