Absolute and Relative Consumption of Married U.S. Households in 1960 and 1996: The Cleavers Meet the Taylors

Consumer Expenditure Survey data for 1960 and 1996 are used to examine the real consumption of single-earner and dual-earner households. Both real consumption quantities and budget shares of consumption categories were found to differ by household earner type. However, both real consumption quantities and budgct shares of the majority of consumption categories were more similar for single-earner households and dual-earner households with two full-time workers in 1996 than in 1960. Also, the savings rate of all household earner types improved significantly from 1960 to 1996. Television often reflects society, and societal changes can be discerned by comparing popular television programs of different eras. In the 1950s, the Cleaver family of the Leave It to Beaver series epitomized the American single-earner household with the stay-at-home mom. In contrast, the Taylor family of the popular 1990s show Home Improvement featured the modem household with two parents engaged in paid work. Implications of the rise of dual-earner households in the U.S. have been the subject of several kinds of studies. These include studies devoted to the implications for time-use (Goldscheider and Waite 1991; Shelton, 1992), for child-rearing (Bryant and Zick 1996), for income-specifically, whether two incomes are needed to achieve a living standard that one income provided in earlier decades (Walden 2001), and for consumption patterns (Rubin, Riney, and Molina 1990). Consumption is defined by economists as the value of goods and services purchased by households during a time period (Tregarthen and Rittenberg 2000, p. 413). This study focuses on consumption patterns and is intended to make three contributions. First, the study extends the period of comparison to one longer than in earlier studies. The study thus affords a comparison of recent data (1996) with data from a period prior to most of the increase in dual-earner households (1960). Second, the study includes a focus on relative consumption between single-earner and dual-earner households with an objective of testing Duesenberry's hypothesis that consumption patterns of peer groups will become more similar over time. Relative consumption comparisons are made both for total consumption and for 13 consumption categories. Third, in comparing consumption in the two years, the study is careful to compare inflation-adjusted quantities, where each consumption category is adjusted by a price index specific for that category. Thus, comparisons are made of the quantities of consumption categories rather than spending in the categories as in previous studies. Since it is the quantities of goods and services that should affect consumer utility, this approach is considered an improvement. The following sections include a review of related work, discussion of the data and approach used, presentation of results, and a summary and discussion of implications. RELATED WORK The general consensus from several studies is that household earner type has little effect on how households allocate their spending after other relevant factors, most notably income, are taken into account. Strober (1977) and Strober and Weinberg (1977) found no difference in the consumption of durable goods and services for dual-earner and single-earner households after controlling for income. Bellante and Foster (1984) and Foster, Abdel-Ghany, and Ferguson (1981) found wife's employment had no impact on the purchase of labor-saving devices for households with the same income. However, Bryant (1988) did find that households with working women spent more on convenience goods and services. If expenditure patterns do differ between single-earner and dual-earner households, the differences have been found for work-related categories. Bellante and Foster (1984) found that weeks worked of the wife were related to expenditures for child care and food away from home. …