NEW YORK – In anticipation of Mother’s Day, Joint Economic Committee (JEC) Ranking Democrat Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) released a new report today identifying the enormous economic contributions mothers make to the financial support of their families.
The study found that the economic security of two-thirds of American families depends upon a mother’s earnings; mothers typically contribute 40 percent to their families’ overall incomes, collectively earning $960 billion in 2013; and one in three working mothers is the breadwinner.
The Joint Economic Committee report, titled How Working Mothers Contribute to the Economic Security of American Families, details the dramatic changes in the labor force over the last few decades; the central role mothers play in supporting their families; the wage disparities between mothers and fathers, parents and non-parents; and the long-term economic ramifications for mothers.
“The typical 21st century mother has two jobs: One inside the home and one outside the home,” Maloney said. “Yes, mothers bake cookies. But they also bring home the bacon.
“This Mother’s Day, let’s acknowledge the essential contribution mothers in the workforce make to the economic well-being of their families. Let’s also recognize that public policy simply has not kept pace with dramatic increase in the participation of mothers – and women in general – in the labor force.
“I hope the JEC report helps spur Congressional action to enable the 25 million mothers in the workforce to care for their families at home and at work.”
In 1975, slightly more than 34 percent of mothers with children under the age of three worked outside the home. That number has ballooned to over 62 percent today. Over the same period, the percent of mothers with children under the age of six in the labor force leapt from 39 percent to almost 65 percent.
The report also found:
• In 1975, less than one-half of mothers were in the labor force. Today, that share has grown to more than two-thirds.
• Mothers collectively earned $960 billion dollars for their families in 2013.
• In the typical family with a working mother, a mother contributes nearly 40 percent to her household’s income. In the poorest families, mothers contribute 86 percent of the total income.
• One in three mothers working outside the home is their family’s only wage earner.
• Fewer than one in five families currently fit the 1950s stereotype of a father going to work and a mother staying at home.
• Mothers in the workforce pay a financial penalty, earning 3 percent less than women without children, while fathers in the workforce receive a bonus, earning 15 percent more than men without children.
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