The distinctive economic histories of African American and White wives suggest that involvement in household income production holds contextually situated unique meanings for these groups. Yet research has not addressed racial differences in the effects of relative earnings on marital well‐being. Surveying 431 employed wives in 21 U.S. cities, we found that wife‐to‐husband income ratio and marital happiness were negatively associated when women held traditional values, but in racially distinct ways. Among White women only, a negative association between income ratio and marital happiness was reversed when financial need was reported. Findings are discussed in terms of variability in the meaning of wives’ earnings as a function of situational, historical, and sociocultural dynamics.

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This study examined attitudinal and structural correlates of personal and relationship well-being among 139 African Americans in romantic partnerships, including marriage. Multiple regression analyses indicated that marital valuation is an important predictor of subjective well-being among partnered African American men. Among women, the value of relationships more generally, rather than marriage, was predictive of happiness and marital/relationship satisfaction. Although perceived mate availability was not a salient predictor of subjective well-being in the overall sample, it was related to depressive symptomatology among men. Income and education were unrelated to well-being. Results suggest that men who value marriage are more likely to reap the benefits ofpartnerships. They also suggest that the relative shortage of available men has no direct impact on women's mental health, perhaps because of a sense that the situation is systemically determined rather than a measure of personal adequacy.

A key goal of this research was to determine whether selected economic and demographic factors explaining entry into marriage among African American men are constant across time, or are salient only at certain historical junctures. The study uses 1970-1990 Public Use Microdata Sample 5% Census data files from metropolitan areas with large African American populations. The study’s key innovation is the use of multilevel analysis to link macro-level indicators with individual level characteristics and marital outcomes. Several structural explanations of change in marriage are explored in this study, and particular attention is given to examining theories which link changes in the U.S. economy to changing family formation among African Americans. In 1970, only individual level characteristics were important predictors of marriage among African American men. In the latter two decades, context exerted more significant effects on marriage likelihood. In 1980, the contextual predictors, male joblessness and industrial composition, had a significant effect on the likelihood of marriage. In 1990 the proportion of single women who worked fulltime contributed significantly to the model. Female economic independence, represented by the proportion of single women who worked fulltime, had a negative effect on the likelihood of marriage among men. These findings suggest that the manner in which context constrains marriage and family formation has changed over the time period in question.