Income And Marriage Statistics

Income And Marriage Statistics, Re “When a Woman Earns Like a Man” (The Week in Review, Nov. 6): According to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, women’s earnings have risen to 77 percent of men’s, significantly more than your 70 percent. In addition, nearly one-third of working married women earn more than their spouses, another rising proportion.

The closing gap between women’s and men’s earnings, even as women’s labor force participation rates have leveled off and men’s have dropped, means women will have personal options, such as whom to marry or when to unmarry, that men have long had.

What if men were expected to marry for financial support and women for companionship and a household? Is this closer than you think? JANE SJOGREN Associate Professor of Economics Simmons College Boston, Nov. 9, 1994