Increase In Single Moms Lowers Growth Rate Of Median Family Income

From The Wall Street Journal, Real Time Economics, "Number of the Week: Rise of Single Moms Drives Down Overall Income" by Ben Casselman:

Change in median income compares the typical household of the past to the typical household of today — and the typical American family looks a lot different now than it did two decades ago. Back then, Americans as a whole were younger, whiter and less educated than they are today.***Take families with children, for example. The median income for all families with children under 18 was just under $60,000 last year, up about 3% since 1990 after adjusting for inflation. But what might once have been considered the “typical” American family — a married couple, living together, with at least one child under 18 — has done quite a bit better: Their median income was $81,455, up nearly 16% from 1990.

The trouble is, such families have become significantly less common over time. In 1980, married couples made up 80% of all families with children. A decade later, that figure had fallen below 75%. Today, it’s less than two-thirds. The number of families headed by single moms — any mother with no spouse present, regardless of whether she has a live-in partner — has increased more than 30% since 1990, to more than 10 million.

In terms of income growth, single moms aren’t actually doing much worse than their married counterparts — their median income is up 14% since 1990, nearly as much as for married parents. But they earn far less in absolute terms. The median income for a family headed by a single mother was $25,493 in 2012, which means roughly 5 million single mothers earn less than $25,000 a year. [Emphasis added.]