[CliffFletcher]

It’s difficult to overstate the impact of the mass entry of women into university and the workforce. It created a new class of household - the dual-income professional - that did not exist before the 80s. An upper-middle-class household with income of 180k can afford to spend much more on housing than their counterpart household a generation or two earlier that had one professional salary, or maybe one professional salary and a service industry salary.

This economic class has driven up housing prices and widened inequality. Because of assortative mating, the income advantage of skilled professionals gets doubled, and households with two working-class incomes - let alone a single income - can’t compete. Then there’s the keeping-up-with-the-Jones impact. Families where mom and dad earn 60k each come to see the lifestyle of families where mom and dad earn 90k each - the trips to Mexico, regular dinners at Earls, the new SUV every five years, expensive gymnastics and hockey programs - as just baseline middle-class norms.