Achieving the American Dream doesn’t look like it used to.
Years of social and labor market changes, along with soaring prices for everything from health care to higher education, have chipped away at the traditional American family structure that relied on a single breadwinner for financial stability.
For starters, fewer couples are getting married than a generation ago, and according to the Pew Research Center, married couples are more likely to both work, by choice and necessity.
“There was a golden age when you could own a house, own a car, and live on a single income, but those days are gone,” Bankrate economic analyst Sarah Foster told CNBC.
Today, research shows that living a middle-class life requires working parents. A recent survey by Harris Poll found that even people with six-figure incomes in the United States said they find it “nearly impossible” to live on one income.
According to 2024 data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, about half of all married couple households had both spouses employed. In households with children, two-thirds of all households had both husband and wife working outside the home.
“There was a time in the U.S. when couples with children could live at home with only one breadwinner, but those days are largely a thing of the past,” said Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst at Bankrate.
Household expenses have risen
Hamrick said inflation and rising costs for things like child care, college, car loans, housing and rent are creating “affordability challenges.”
Nationally, health insurance premiums for families have increased by more than 25% since 2020, outpacing inflation. Research shows that child support and college tuition have both increased by more than 5% over the same period each year, outpacing inflation and other household expenses.
At the same time, the housing shortage has pushed rent and mortgage prices far beyond what single income earners can afford.
“We know that for so many families, costs have gone up so much that they need to make more money to pay for childcare, to pay for health care, to make ends meet,” said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank that requires more hours worked per family.
Workplace dynamics have changed
Major changes in the workplace are also making it more difficult to rely on one income. “Both job security and the sense of belonging that workers have at work are being disrupted,” Hamrick said.
More workers are now participating in the gig economy, which makes them less likely to have sustainable and predictable income and workplace benefits, eroding long-term job security, he said.
Fewer gig workers, or even full-time employees, are receiving traditional pensions, and they are increasingly responsible for funding their own retirement plans.
“For workers without predictable work hours or benefits, even a full-time schedule is not enough to guarantee a steady income or support a household on one paycheck,” said Scott Winship, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative public policy think tank.
Expanding opportunities for women to play an active role
But it’s not just economic pressures that are at play.
Winship says the shift to dual-income households also reflects increased opportunities for women and the removal of some gender barriers.
Many studies show that women have made great strides in education and careers, and that they work as much or more than men.
According to the Pew Research Center, as the proportion of heterosexual marriages increases, women are now the primary breadwinners, earning more than their husbands.
“Women have far more opportunities than they used to, so they’re working longer and demanding higher wages,” Winship said. That, he says, has changed expectations about today’s “middle-class lifestyle.”
— CNBC Lead Producer Charlotte Morabito contributed to this report.
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