One barometer is median household income, which rose 60 percent between 1970 and 2007 for married men, married women and unmarried women, but only 16 percent for unmarried men, according to the Pew data.
The report focused on U.S.-born men and women aged 30 to 44, a stage when typical adults have finished their education, married and launched careers. The Pew report noted that today's Americans in this age group are the first such cohort in U.S. history to include more women than men with college degrees.
In 1970, according to the report, 28 percent of wives in this age range had husbands who were better educated than they were, outnumbering the 20 percent whose husbands had less education. By 2007, these patterns had reversed: 19 percent of wives had husbands with more education, compared with 28 percent whose husbands had less education.
