Susanna Mancini used to be successful as a lawyer and well paid for it. But her career eventually succumbed to her husband's even bigger success. She quit in 2005 when her six-digit income was overtaken by his seven-digit one.

She is far from alone, according to a new study from the Federal Reserve, due to be published shortly.

It shows that between 1993 and 2006, there was a decline in the workforce of 0.1 percent a year on average in the number of college-educated women, with similarly educated spouses.

That contrasts with growth of 2.4 percent a year between 1976 and 1992.

In 1975, college graduates of both sexes were making 43 percent more than non-college graduates. By 2008, the figure had risen to 92 percent for men and to 70 percent for women.

"In the last 20 years, wages for highly educated males increased so much that they dwarfed the family's second income, usually the one of their wives," said Albanesi, who co-authored the study with Columbia University graduate student Maria Prados.

"The result was that sometimes married women exited the labor force mid-career, exactly around the time their husbands are promoted to more senior roles. They stopped getting income they didn't need and so they left the labor force forever."

(Read by Lee Hannon. Lee Hannon is a journalist at the China Daily Website.)

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(Agencies)