[krichman]

Maybe the dad stays home, or it's a gay couple, so it's modern single earner.

Unless I have been grossly mislead, if singer-earner salaries had appreciated like CEO salaries from the 1950's to now one parent could afford to stay home or just work part time. I don't know why it should be necessary for both persons of a marriage to work full-time on average.

[jlgreco]

Being a single-earner household is a luxury and a 20k/year household cannot afford it.

There are always going to be shit jobs meant for teenagers that pay wages good for teenagers (cashiers, part-time lifeguards, sandwich assemblers, etc). If an adult tries to support 3 other people with such a job, they are going to have a very difficult time and that should not surprise or disturb us.

You aren't going to get companies to scale their pay based on what the individual employee needs. If you did, would McDonalds have to pay the fry chef with 7 kids more than the fry chef with 3 kids, who is in turn paid more than the 19 year old fry chef who is trying to pay for community college and car insurance? That would be absurd. If you think that somebody needs to take up the slack, you need to look to government, not corporations.

[tanzam75]

Supply-and-demand.

As women entered the workforce, this created more supply, which drove wages down, which forced more women to enter the workforce. Similarly, two-earner households could outbid single-earner households when purchasing real estate, which also drove the need for a two-earner household.

This transition is not reversible. However, it only happens once (excepting polygamy).