In the Hartford area, women lead the way in supporting their families.
According to a new study, the Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford metro area has the second-most female breadwinners in the country. E-commerce site Volusion based the study on data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2018 American Community Survey.
“Given evolving gender norms and the growing numbers of women who earn more than their husbands, researchers at Volusion wanted to find which metropolitan areas have the most female breadwinners,” the study reads.
From the U.S. Census Bureau data, the study zeroes in on only heterosexual married-couple households in which both the wife and husband earned money. In the Hartford metro area, the woman out-earned the man in 33.3% of those households, the study says.
The median earnings for those female breadwinners in the Hartford area was $86,000, while their husbands’ median earnings was $40,000. Comparatively, the median earnings for all female workers (including part-time and full-time individuals) in the Hartford metro area was $40,000, while male workers’ median earnings was $55,000.
The study lists the top 15 large metro areas — those with 1 million or more residents — with the most female breadwinners. The only metro area in the country that beats Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford is in New York — Buffalo-Cheektowaga-Niagara Falls to be exact. There, 33.6% of heterosexual married-couple households have female breadwinners. But the female breadwinners’ median earnings is $16,000 less than the Hartford area’s, at just $70,000.
The other large metro areas in the top five are:
Sacramento-Roseville-Arden-Arcade, Calif. (No. 3 with 33.1% female breadwinners);
Memphis, Tenn., which encompasses parts of Tennessee, Mississippi and Arkansas (No. 4 with 32.9% female breadwinners);
Raleigh, N.C. (No. 5 with 32.5% female breadwinners).
Interestingly, another Connecticut city is mentioned in the study. Volusion created a separate list of midsize metro areas, or those with populations between 350,000 and 999,999 people.
The New Haven-Milford area is ranked No. 8 on that list, with 34.3% of heterosexual married-couple households having female breadwinners. Springfield is No. 13 on the midsize city list, with a 32.7% share of female breadwinners.
