I just want to add that the rent doesn't scale proportionately to number of bedrooms.
E.g. a 1BR in San Jose where I live goes for $2100/mo, a 2BR goes for $2400 (obviously, it's different everywhere - a friend of mine is renting a room in SF for $2K+).
It makes sense for a couple to get a 2BR even on a single income if it's good enough (and usually, once you can afford spending $2100/mo on rent, you can afford $2400 too). For 15% increase in rent, one gets the ability to e.g. comfortably invite friends/parents from out of state for a couple of days.
Of course, single-income no-kids couple does not look immediately look like the norm these days; but once you think of it, there are plenty of situations other than children that make sense for such a scenario: one of the partners might be in school / looking for a job / changing fields / being involved in something that doesn't provide a stable salary (arts, entrepreneurship) / did I mention start-ups? / etc
This is also because in San Jose// San Francisco, most of the population is a single twenty or thirty something that only need a 1Bedroom. The demand for 1BR is therefore absolutely huge compared to 2+BR
Unsure. But equality is one factor. At least where I live women outnumber men at universities - meaning that if one partner in the relation has an "important career", it's very soon going to be more often the mother.
Another factor is rents and house prices. If everyone you are competing with for that house can pay the mortgage on two incomes, you aren't going to afford it on one. So that's economic necessity I guess.
> At least where I live women outnumber men at universities - meaning that if one partner in the relation has an "important career", it's very soon going to be more often the mother.
You can't logically conclude that based on that one data point.
Women go less into STEM and higher income domains, compared to men. They have more degrees in aggregate but it's a higher proportion of "worthless" degrees. It is not meaningful to predict income.
Jokes aside, it was a data point to illustrate a change that I know takes place also in other countries; that women account for an ever larger fraction of people with higher education. The number of families where the mother makes more money than the man is slowly increasing.
>Jokes aside, it was a data point to illustrate a change that I know takes place also in other countries; that women account for an ever larger fraction of people with higher education. The number of families where the mother makes more money than the man is slowly increasing.
I think if you dig into the data for US universities, you'll find that women are underrepresented in high-paying STEM majors and over-represented in low-paying majors like Dance or Early Childhood Development or Pre-1860 Russian Literature. Until that changes, I don't think your prediction is likely to come to pass.
She has to work because most women work. Property is the bottleneck in the system, prices and rents rise to consume any surplus. If most women work, then prices and rents rise to the level only affordable for dual incomes. If one half of every couple stopped working, prices and rents would have to fall back to single-income affordable levels.
E.g. a 1BR in San Jose where I live goes for $2100/mo, a 2BR goes for $2400 (obviously, it's different everywhere - a friend of mine is renting a room in SF for $2K+).
It makes sense for a couple to get a 2BR even on a single income if it's good enough (and usually, once you can afford spending $2100/mo on rent, you can afford $2400 too). For 15% increase in rent, one gets the ability to e.g. comfortably invite friends/parents from out of state for a couple of days.
Of course, single-income no-kids couple does not look immediately look like the norm these days; but once you think of it, there are plenty of situations other than children that make sense for such a scenario: one of the partners might be in school / looking for a job / changing fields / being involved in something that doesn't provide a stable salary (arts, entrepreneurship) / did I mention start-ups? / etc