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By Jill Yavorsky and Sarah Thebaud
Men are the sole breadwinners in over half of super rich heterosexual couples—defined as those in the top 1 percent of households—while the women are not employed, according to our new peer-reviewed study. That’s twice the rate of less affluent heterosexual couples.
Our finding is based on 30 years of data, from 1989 to 2019, from the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances. We examined how couples divide work, focusing on three different wealthy groups— the super-rich, the just plain rich and the upper middle class, as defined by their wealth percentile—and compared them with those of less affluent couples.