In Health Insurance, you'll recall that Craig was throwing a party for Lois' tenth anniversary of working at the Lucky Aid. That means Malcolm would have been 17; ten years ago, he only would have been seven (he was eleven or twelve when the series started) so that's a lot of time that the family was together that Lois wasn't actually working at the Lucky Aide. Tony mentioned in a recent thread that in Flashback, the family is actually portrayed as being financially healthy (to some degree) until Malcolm is born. So did Lois have a more secure job before the Lucky Aide, or was it simply Hal's higher salary that supported the two of them?