Wealth of Families with Working Wives

Virginia Gillham is Associate Librarian in the Public Service Library at
the University of Guelph.

This study examines the wealth, as interpreted from the relative levels of assets and indebtedness, of married couples wherein the wife is or is not gainfully employed. Not unexpectedly, the hypothesis — that two-income families are, on average, wealthier than one-income families — is borne out by the data.

Included are analyses of assets, debts, family total and individual incomes grouped according to the age of the wife and whether she works full or part time. A list of caveats in the introduction makes clear certain assumptions which had to be made, which could conceivably have skewed the data. An extensive set of graphs and tables, together with a bibliography of supporting information, complete the work.

While neither the hypothesis nor the interpretation of the data brings any surprises, this study pulls together a body of interesting and potentially useful information. How unfortunate that it is so badly out of date! User complaints about the common six- to nine-month delay in the issue of Statistics Canada information are not uncommon. These pale by comparison with this study, issued in mid-1983 based on a 1977 survey which collected 1976 data.

Having occupied seven years working out the philosophy of the analyses, might it not have been prudent to wait one more year and apply it to the updated version of the data, which the author indicates was collected in 1984?

This rather cavalier use of taxpayers’ money to support a study of seven-year-old data, which is an anachronism as soon as it is published, is distressing in the extreme. Either the philosophy of this study is sufficiently relevant and valid to warrant the use of current data, or the report should not have been produced at all.