An increasing number of affluent women with affluent husbands are casting off the chains of professional work, according to a forthcoming Federal Reserve study that Reuters apparently obtained in advance…

“The trend is not limited to top earners,” Reuters notes. “It has been detected among households earning around $80,000 per year.” But $80,000 goes a lot further in the middle of the country than it does in New York or San Francisco. A husband has to be fairly affluent for his wife to be able to afford to stay home: “Only a few households can afford to give up a good second income.”

For women with lower levels of education, the picture is markedly different, as Charles Murray shows in “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010.” One-income households have become common at the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum as well–but because women are less likely to be married at all, while men are less likely to be in the labor force.