Young, Single, Childless Women Earn More Than Men

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2015274,00.html?xid=rss-fullnation-yahoo

by gamble • 16 years ago

70 74 16 years ago

ronnier• 16 years ago

I'm wondering, does this play into why I see so many men under 40 who want to marry, but can't find a woman who will marry them?

ghurlman• 16 years ago

That's probably just a more regional thing, as I've been seeing the exact opposite of that for years.

sin73• 16 years ago

Yes, it does. There have been some studies on the black community where the women would rather remain single mothers than to marry. The logic being that men become an expense.There are also studies that show that divorce is much likelier in cases where there are no male children or the woman makes more than the man.

trustfundbaby2• 16 years ago

>Yes, it does. There have been some studies on the black community where the women would rather remain single mothers than to marry.

Can you link to some of those studies?

joe_the_user• 16 years ago

Well, someone has to earn more.

When there's a labor market, being male or being female is going to be a factor in your desirability in that market, since it's, at the very least, a marker for other characteristics. Same with race or even height.

It's certainly a problem if the disparities get too large.

Now, the question is, how one can determine what is "too large"?

gaius7• 16 years ago

The headline gives it away "At Last, Women on Top". Wasn't this supposed to be about equality?

houseabsolute3• 16 years ago

Temporary overcorrection seems more equitable than a longer time before reaching true equality. I.e. this[1] is OK. Or, even better, in this image[2] we prefer the light blue line to the green line, because it is more equitable overall.

[1] http://www.newport.com/images/web600w-EN/images/1231942.gif

[2] http://i.cmpnet.com/embedded/gifs/2000/0010/0010feat3fig17.g...

awakeasleep2• 16 years ago

I don't like that either, but when I think about how complicated control systems are, it eases my mind a bit. A system that oscillates towards the goal seems to be reasonable and even expected when you're dealing with something as complex as success in life.

Of course, it SUCKS that anyone is ever on the wrong end of that oscillation.

pigbucket• 16 years ago

The title gives nothing away except for the fact that some editor, not possessing the usual unimpeachable standards of his calling, decided to sacrifice meaning for sensation. The first sentence of the article points out that the avg. woman earns 8/10 of the avg. man's wage. Equality is still a ways off. Also, the women in the studied group are being paid more because they are on avg. more highly educated; there is no suggestion that they are getting paid more for the same work.

tomjen3• 16 years ago

Yes, but that was a long time ago - women haven't really been discriminated against in any serious, society wide way for a very long time.

sin73• 16 years ago

Their desirability in the market is due to their education, not their gender.

gaius7• 16 years ago

As it should be.

jacoblyles3• 16 years ago

Does anybody know how the study defined "peer group"? I'm guessing from context that it was some sort of age grouping.

awakeasleep2• 16 years ago

I think they took an even more granular approach. Thats what the 'young, single, childless' stuff was about. They were comparing people who fit all those categories.

jhuckestein• 16 years ago

I think the women included in the study were more ambitious than the men and are thus likely to earn more.

trustfundbaby2• 16 years ago

Nah ... I think on average Men just don't go to college as much as women do these days.

Since college gives you a $6k bump (or so) in earnings per year afterwards ... its stands to reason that would be reflected in the numbers.

There's a much longer and involved article that breaks down the entire thing more, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-end-...

hugh3• 16 years ago

I'm confused. Does the average young, single, childless woman earn more than the average man, or more than the average young, single, childless man?

zacharycohn• 16 years ago

Part of the article says that "the median full-time salaries of young women are 8% higher than those of the guys in their peer group."

Assuming that the article was written well, I would assume that they are referring to the average young, single, childless man.

jbooth5• 16 years ago

Women have a higher average education level, too, though. I wonder what the number is if you normalize for education, say stratify it into male vs female for some college, bachelors, master's, etc. Might be interesting. But probably a way less attractive headline.

notahacker• 16 years ago

It's not necessarily good news for women. They've talked a lot about the benefits to higher education levels amongst young women, but how much of it is down to a simple selection effect: women that are intelligent, ambitious and career-minded are more likely [quite possibly through choice] to be single and childless in their twenties? Men that are intelligent, ambitious and career-minded don't necessarily need to make the same sacrifices, hence a male cohort of single, childless twentysomethings being quite possibly less valuable to employers than the male one. It's even conceivable that young, single childless women might be both earning more than their male counterparts and still being underpaid relative to their capabilities.

Yzupnick• 16 years ago

You seem to have a preconceived notion on the way the world works: Woman get paid less than men. But when encountering data that would imply the contrary, instead of simply correcting your premise, you rework the analysis of the data in a convoluted way, in order that you keep your preconceived notion about how the world works: "Woman should really be earning even more, but because of prejudices they are only earning x more than men."

m-photonic2• 16 years ago

All the parent comment is really saying is that "young, childless women" aren't an equivalent demographic to "young, childless men." In addition to the arguments already stated, I imagine that more men than women in the relevant age group are childless in the first place (since men are typically older than their wives). This alone means that a young woman's childlessness says more about her than a young man's does about him.

Nowhere does the comment say that women should be earning more than men. It says that if having children wasn't as much of a liability to working women as it currently is, then childlessness in women would be less associated with career-mindedness, which would cause this particular statistic to equalize somewhat.

Alex3917• 16 years ago

"How much of it is down to a simple selection effect: women that are intelligent, ambitious and career-minded are more likely to be single and childless in their twenties?"

I don't remember the percentages offhand, but a lot of the reason unmarried women do better is because marriage creates a monopsony for women. Basically employers have to pay less to hire women because their BATNAs are only local instead of national or global.

usaar333• 16 years ago

I imagine this affects men married to career-minded women just as much (though they probably are the minority).

erikpukinskis2• 16 years ago

The pay gap that most people care about is that women earn less than men who do the same job. Because men tend to work different jobs than women, this statistic is not particularly interesting to me.

imesh• 16 years ago

This made me think. Could the pay difference be because men work more hours? There are more woman with children with part time jobs vs men with children. This is just a thought.

eru• 16 years ago

The answer is: partly

There are statistics that give pay per hour, too.

crystalis4• 16 years ago

Similar studies that I'll try to track down have it down to hours worked. Unmarried women in the same profession continued to display the same earnings as men. It may have extended to married women without children, but I can't recall- I'll update when I find the study.

The argument that the data supported is as follows: fewer hours worked (counting the expected or not unpaid overtime) led to smaller raises and fewer promotions. Subsequent raises and promotions are based on the resultant salaries and titles, leading to a snowball effect. Maternal leave puts the whole process on pause and puts a mother behind on the snowball process.

jakarta• 16 years ago

this is probably the most likely culprit.

think about it for high paying professions such as top law firm work, or an investment bank -- getting ahead to make partner means working tons of hours which is not a viable option if you have a kid (unless there is a stay at home father).

emil0r• 16 years ago

Depends on the country, the speaker, the statistics they choose and what they choose to speak about.

A favorite trick though from the radical feminists is to lump all the men into one group and all the women into another group and then compare the two. Always, the men will come out on top simply because of biology. Women stay at home more than men starting with pregnancy, then staying at home with the toddler, a lot of women also choose to work less than 100% in order to be at home with their children, etc.

baddox• 16 years ago

In some cases, it may be even simpler than that. Perhaps men simply ask for raises or promotions more often than women. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07...

yummyfajitas• 16 years ago

Most people, perhaps. Not most congresspeople.

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-1338

(For those unfamiliar, this law would have encoded the notion of "comparable worth" into law. Comparable worth is the notion that entire fields/job categories are underpaid due to sexism.)

jacoblyles3• 16 years ago

It's baaack:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09...

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-12

jacoblyles3• 16 years ago

I don't think the famous "women make 76 cents on the dollar compared to men" statistic was ever for the same job. I would be interested to know a better quality statistic (I seem to remember a study or two that put it at only a couple of cents, controlling for profession, experience, and etc).

erikpukinskis2• 16 years ago

"Women managers make 81 cents to a man's buck, according to a report released Tuesday from the Government Accountability Office... Many studies, including the GAO report, control for such factors as job experience and gender preference for different jobs to make a fair comparison of wages." - http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-women-managers-2010092...

"Once you control for factors like education and experience, notes Francine Blau — who, along with fellow Cornell economist Lawrence Kahn, published a study on the 1998 wage gap — women's earnings rise to 81% of men's" - http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1983185,00.ht...

"You can control for all you want to control for, and the gaps remain," - http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/women-intensely-dissatisfie...

VladRussian• 16 years ago

on NPR they said that only 2 areas still see male dominance - janitorial and computer engineering. Looks like cleaning somebody's mess up is a real macho thing.

gaius7• 16 years ago

Only in one of those fields will the gender skew be seen as a "problem" tho'. The other, feminists would be perfectly happy to leave to the men.

yalurker• 16 years ago

The whole gender wage gap issue tends to set me off, as it is filled with "lies, damned lies and statistics" and half the arguments seem to exist in a fairy tale world, so this may get a little ranty, but I'll try to keep it on the level:

OF COURSE THEY DO! As someone born in the 1980s, the gender norms of the previous generations had already been blown away. Schools are filled with female teachers, administrators and policy makers. The bias inherent in the system is already in favor of females, and yet we pile on extra focus and opportunities for girls at every level from kindergarten through college. We celebrate every female accomplishment while any sign of male over-achievement is viewed as being a manifestation of discrimination.

Today, women are more likely to graduate high school, get a phD, go to law school, go to medical school. Less likely to go to jail. How is anyone surprised when women therefore end up making more money? The horribly flawed, over used statistic about women making less than men has been shown many times to be due to hours worked, aggressiveness in pursuing promotions and raises, and other similar factors.

To compensate for women born before the 1970s getting the short end of the stick, our culture has given girls born in the '80s and later every possible advantage. This news article isn't shocking, surprising, or novel - it was inevitable.

/end rant, goodbye karma

nodata• 16 years ago

Depends on the country doesn't it? In some European countries younger women employees are dangerous because they might go off and get pregnant (companies are legally required to keep their job available).

theklub• 16 years ago

USA has this too.

jbooth5• 16 years ago

There were always a lot of women in education. Just think, not too long ago the most viable career opportunities for women were homemaker, typist and teacher. Apparently, though, women have taken up an even higher % of teaching positions relative to men in recent years.

I dunno if that statistic you're citing is that horribly flawed. Remember, the top end of the income scale is still operating on prior generation norms, or at the least has only very recently changed. It certainly wasn't operating that way in the 1980s. Given the income inequality, the averages probably still work out in favor of men.

jdc• 16 years ago

There have not always been a lot of women (relative to the amount of men) in tenured positions.

baix• 16 years ago

Well off men have no problem marrying poor women, but well off women aren't as likely to marry poor men.

A stereotype, yes, and not always true, does anyone not believe this to be generally true?

Basically, what they are comparing is the average earning power of all women against the average earning power of poor men.

What I'm interested in is the average earning of men young men and women, irrespective of marriage or number children.

27182818284• 16 years ago

"Are Young Women Earning More Than Their Boyfriends? Yes, but only because they're better educated."

http://www.slate.com/id/2266148/

m-photonic2• 16 years ago

"Their research shows that a woman earns 5 percent less the first year out of school than a man who goes to the same college, gets the same grades, has the same major, takes the same kind of job with similar workplace flexibility perks, and has the same personal characteristics, such as marital status, race, and number of children."

It could be that not all of the gap is explained by sexism. The overall educational attainment of women is greater than that of men despite the lack of a difference in average general intelligence between the two groups. It could be that a man who goes to the same college, gets the same grades, and has the same major as a woman is slightly more intelligent than his female counterpart. It's thought that male SAT scores are higher than female SAT scores mainly because fewer males take the test (since fewer males are college-bound).

Naturally I don't argue that there's no discrimination in the workplace. For example, unconscious attitudes on the part of employers that a male worker is "providing for his family" would create a pay gap even if overt sexism is uncommon. My point is that it's misleading to say that this study determines how much of the gap "cannot be explained by anything except the person's gender" as the article writes.

kenjackson2• 16 years ago

How much of the gender gap in educational attainment can be explained away with incarceration? I know I've seen data with African-Americans that show that most of the gender gap in college graduation is covered by incarceration rates (not all, but a lot).

sp332• 16 years ago

Are young women better educated than their boyfriends? Yes, but they can only afford it because they have better job prospects.

kidding, maybe

nkassis• 16 years ago

The article makes a good point about salaries after college but what about the fact that there is a growing gap between men and woman going to college? This is completely glossed over during the article.

kenjackson2• 16 years ago

Young, Single, and Childless I get. But the under 30 part simply seems to suggest that men start off paid slightly less, but then take off over their career. IMO, that appears to be really bad news for women.

BTW, were they comparing all men to young/single/childless/under 30 women or was it men with similar socioeconomic position?

Young, Single, Childless Women Earn More Than Men

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