The Myth of the Impoverished Working Married Couples

We’ve all heard it, and most of us have accepted it as truth. But is it really the case that we in America have it so bad economically that we require married couples to both work just to get by? In short, no. Ok, well how about the notion that in most married couples both are working? Nope, that isn’t true either. I was curious about some related numbers and, as I was in the “most are/need to” camp, I quickly discovered that according to the Current Population Survey, the picture is vastly different from what I expected to find.

So what does it look like? The actual picture should not be surprising, but probably is to most. Along the way I found some annoyances with how the Census Bureau presents the information. One example is that they may say that “For a household size of four the poverty line is $XX,XXX. There are NNN thousand household earning below $XX,XXX.” See what they did? They tell you that in a certain condition the line is at one point, then jump immediately to the number of households below that.

You are thus led to think those two stats are related, but they are anything but related. The other annoyances are mostly UI ones — getting to the right data is annoying bad. But anyway, on to the meat.

First the broad strokes. Of the ~63.3 million married “family groups”, 49% have both “in the workforce” — meaning both want to be working — and are employed. So while close, it does mean most are not. We can express it accurately as “most married couples do not have both parents in the workforce”. This immediately puts a possible damper on the notion that it is mandatory and maybe those other 51% are at the bottom?

Here is how the numbers break out by the income brackets:

Now bear in mind that this data does not differentiate between full- and part-time employment. A married couple where each is working a part-time job is counted the same as a married couple both work full-time jobs. Also, this is gross income, not post-tax. For reference: if one were to work, for federal minimum wage, 40 hours per week every week of the year you’d top out at about 15k annually. At 35 hours per week it come out to just over 13k.

Thus we can see the “should be obvious” aspect. A married couple with both working 35–40 hours per week would be in the 26–30k bracket. If most married couples at the poverty level range were both working, they’d be higher in the brackets than they are. But before we delve into that, here are the federal levels.

So, if most “poor American married couples” were both working full time then they would need to have at least three kids to be below the poverty line. Well, for those in the “lower 48”. Alaska and Hawaii have higher lines, but compared to the lower 48 little population. So from here out all references to the poverty lines will be in the context of the lower 48, where most of us live.

So at the beginning we have a minimum family size of 2: the married couple. Here we can see that given the 16k line, if only one of them is working full time they will be just under the line. If the other has even a 10 hour/week part-time job they will not be. So, can we look at just those married couples who are below the poverty line? We can, indeed. Though we can not break it out by household size. One of those annoyances I mentioned earlier.

As it happens, only 10% of married couples below the poverty line are both employed, around 30% are husband-only (wife not in workforce), and around 6% are wife-only employed (not in workforce). So if we’re just looking at the impoverished, then no they are far from having both working as a rule.

So since we can’t see the size breakdown at the “under the line” level, we’ll have to do with what we do have. Referring back to the first data, we can see a very clear pattern if we look. Percentage of households where both spouses are working is directly correlated with increase in income. We only reach a majority (“most”, since it is a binary category) of married couples both working in the top two brackets. Given that short of having 8 people in the household (mom, dad, and six kids) and living in Alaska, no married couple is making more than $50,000 per year while living below the poverty line.

Outside of that let us look at the “average”: mom, dad, and 2 kids. Of the various brackets for kids living below the line, the most likely scenario is “one sibling” so this is in line with that. Poverty line for that case is $24,680. That means the highest bracket they could be in is the 20–25k bracket, and only 11% of married couples in that bracket have both working. With this being the highest bracket for that family size, it simply doesn’t wash out that “most” poor families have both of them working full-time.

If both parents in that family were working full time their income would be in the 26–31k range. So if both were working 35+ hours per week they would be above the poverty line. So, of the 10% of married couples we have a more limited set of possibilities: more than two kids or at least one parent is working less than full time — or both.

Another factor confounding the claim is that of children living with married parents living together only 8% are below the poverty line — regardless of employment differences. While outside of the above data it is interesting that of children living with both unmarried parents, 41% are below the poverty line. On the higher end, 83% of children under 18 living with married parents are at least twice the poverty line.

So again we can see that the notion both halves of a married couple must be working full-time to “make ends meet” doesn’t have any support in the data, and that by extension the notion this is normal for impoverished families has even less. One final nail in that coffin: children who live with both mom and dad in the labor force (thus including where one of them is classified as unemployed), only 4% are below the poverty line.

This is why we should question these types of claims. Often they do not hold up even if some appear to. For example would you be surprised to learn that of the various combinations of workforce participation and presence of parents, that “mother not in labor force, father not present”, 69% of those kids are living below the poverty line? You might raise an eyebrow at it being “that low” from expecting that combination to be higher, but you would not have expected it to be still lower. Mother being in the labor force drops that to 31%. Both parents present but not in the labor force: 42%. Somehow kids with both parents present but not in the labor force have a much lower chance of being under the poverty line. Noodle on that one for a while.

Sometimes the data throws you curveballs like that. Looking at the above data you might think that having both parents present is the difference. I suspected that to be the case. Yet the data shows that while only 17% of children living with married parents are below the poverty line, a full 41% of those living with both unmarried parents are. This is highest rate-wise among kids living who both parents whom never married each other.

Ten percent of kids living with married parents are covered by food stamps, compared to 31% of kids living with both unmarried parents. This isn’t just a one-table set of data. If you look at other parts of the survey data you’ll see that married couples make more money than unmarried couples living together. It is clear by the data that the families of married couples are better at not being impoverished than families of unmarried couples who live together. Beware, however this is correlation. While they may be a causal effect there the data does not indicate one. It is telling you how the world is, not why it is the way it is.

A prime example of how well-intentioned but short-sighted thinking that cause a lot of problems is the following bit: people who own their own house are less likely to be impoverished, the kids are more likely to do well in school, and are better off financially in virtually every case. So, some concluded, we need to make it easier for more people to buy homes. But the causal agent was not home ownership. Home ownership was a result — people who were more financially disciplined saved up to buy a home and did so. Buying the home didn’t make them suddenly smarter financially.

However, this is getting off-topic. Ultimately the key takeaway is that the claim that in Today’s America mom and dad need to work to get by is utterly untenable. Its fellow traveller, that this still dominates “the poor” is even less true. In reality, it is rather difficult for just any married couple working full-time to be “poor” — you need at least three kids to get there assuming federal minimum wage. It is impossible for just a married couple to be so. Even further, even the claim that most married couples both work is also false.

So the next time someone trots out that invalid claim, be on alert: someone is trying to bamboozle you. Whatever they are trying to sell you using this myth is probably bad for you because at best they are doing it out of ignorance. Two final notes remain.

First, you may have notice I quote “the poor” and “poor”, and make a distinction of impoverished. This is due to my parents. You see, there was a few times when little-kid me would refer to us as “poor”. I’d then be *hem* strenuously corrected with leassons such as “Bill, we are impoverished, not poor. Being impoverished is about what you make versus need and can’t afford. Being poor is a state of mind. You can be monetarily rich and ‘be poor’, but being poor and impoverished will keep you impoverished.” It took a while for that lesson to really sink in, but it did. There were ancillary ones such as being wealthy but poor would lead to being impoverished and poor.

Finally, the results I noted above aren’t new. Similar articles were written more than twenty years ago. So the claim of the two-income necessity, and indeed the two-income family itself hasn’t been true for decades — if it ever was true.