The traditional, married, male breadwinner model family was long believed by policy-makers to offer protection against risk, particularly for women and children.
This is also true of families in which the main breadwinner is the professionally employed wife and the husband is a secondary provider.
It is argued that this was due to young women's increasing economic importance as household breadwinners.
Through either unemployment or divorce, single women frequently became the sole breadwinner for their extended families.
This means that the future consumption of a breadwinner's surviving dependents is affected only marginally by the size of his bequest.
In addition, marital tensions may intensity after retirement because the husband loses his role as main breadwinner.
In the strictest terms, all households are multi-active, but when household heads are considered as breadwinners, single-active households can be identified.
Insurance was usually held by the breadwinner of the family, which at the turn of the century was almost universally the husband.
