This report presents statistics on white and Negro husband-wife families by family income, earnings of the husband and of the wife, work experience and occupation group of the wife, age of the husband and region, for 1970, 1969, and 1959. The focus of this report is young husband-wife families in the North and West.

Since 1959, the gap between the median incomes of white and Negro families has narrowed substantially. The overall ratio of Negro to white family income was about 61 percent in 1970 as compared with only about 51 percent in 1959 (Table 1). In the North and West, the median income of Negro families was more comparable to that of white families than was the case in the South in both 1970 and 1959. In 1970, the incomes of Negro families outside the South averaged about 74 percent that of whites as compared to 57 percent in the South.