The end of the golden age: on growing challenges for male workers and their partners to secure a family income

Abstract

Thanks to the male breadwinner model with wages sufficient to support a family, working-class families used to be financially secure. The transformation towards the adult worker model (AWM) saw an accumulation of adverse employment characteristics—especially among manual and non-manual routine occupations—and a rise in poverty risks. However, there is a lack of research that combines these strands. I ask to what extent male Western German workers and their partners’ ability to secure labour earnings that support a family has changed, and to what degree this was hampered by various adverse employment characteristics. Focusing on service and production workers with cohabiting partners, I analyse whether their individual and combined labour income is sufficient to support a family. Performing descriptive trend analysis and linear probability models with German Socio-Economic Panel data for 1985–2013, I compare class effects of four periods. I find that since the end of the 1990s, male service and production workers increasingly struggle to secure a family income—mainly driven by low wages and low work intensity, while partners’ labour market participation has gained relevance. The transformation towards the AWM coincided with a devaluation of the most privileged group among workers and thus the working class as a whole.