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Jordan Peeples, PhD's avatar

I think this is a really interesting paper. It seems like they put a strong focus on the secondary earner but didn't really discuss the composition of marriages (which is also a strong contributor). It would have been nice to see the changes in relative income within households for 2 married adults just for comparison. The SIPP data would be able to give a lot of insight here as well.

Either way, nice article! I very much respect what you're doing with your Substack. I just started out and have one post, but I am trying to do a similar thing, except I am using multiple econ/sociology papers to answer a question rather than going into detail on 1. I graduated from Penn with my PhD in Economics in May.

Looking forward to reading more from you!

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Tom VanHeuvelen's avatar

Thanks for the kind note! Your substack looks very interesting. Just subscribed.

Yes, I think that they focused on the secondary earners since that seems to have been the most pronounced and discordant factor aligning with the post 2012 divergence. But you're absolutely right - there's so much going on with changing marriage / family / householding trends right now. Lots to unpack in relation to inequality trends.

Deirdre Bloome and Leslie McCall have a cool paper in Am. Journal of Sociology that looks at the relative income across spouses -

https://doi.org/10.1086/702278

Looking forward to reading your substack!

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Jeremy's avatar

Other than rising costs of housing, what explains the increase in multigenerational households?

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Tom VanHeuvelen's avatar

This is a great question. I need to dig a bit more into this, but I've seen a few different answers:

1- Housing costs, like you said. Likely a big factor.

2- Demographic composition. I _think_ that we see recent immigrants and racial/ethnic minorities with higher rates of adult children living with parents.

3- College debts, plus higher costs for major life transition purchases. Not the biggest, but with college expansion + higher probabilities and rates of debt will likely shift some home.

4- Delayed adulthood. Jean Twenge talks about delayed adulthood as a civilizational trend that extends across generations. This is likely part of that long term trend.

There are undoubtedly more reasons. I need to dig into it. But definitely a space where more generalist sociological / family sociology work can be done!

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