THE IMPACT OF FEMALE WORK ON FAMILY INCOME DISTRIBUTION IN THE UNITED STATES: BLACK‐WHITE DIFFERENTIALS*

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Abstract
Using data from the 1973 National Survey of Family Growth, the present study analyzes, for blacks and whites separately, the impact of female market activity on the inequality of the income distribution among households. The family life cycle is divided into three stages, according to the presence and age of children: (1) the interval between marriage and the birth of the first child, (2) the child‐rearing interval, and (3) a final period which begins when all the children have reached school age. Using the coefficient of variation as an indicator of inequality, the empirical results show that in period 1, the contribution of white working wives has a large equalizing impact, while that of their black counterparts results in a slight increase in dispersion. In the child‐rearing and post child‐rearing stages, the labor supply of mothers decreases family income inequality by a small amount for both black and white households. A decomposition of the squared coefficient of variation of family income is presented to aid in the interpretation of these findings.

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