Stagnating male wages in America over the last few decades has resulted in the two-worker family. While many women want to work to fulfill their own goals and gain financial independence, there is also a monetary advantage. The latest data show that the median income of two-worker families was nearly $71,000. If only the husband worked, the median family income was $41,000.
In the meantime, women's wages rose substantially over this period. Forty years ago, the Census Bureau reports, women made, on average, 59 percent of what men made. Now they make 77 percent resulting in the proportion of two-worker families soaring in America, to 62 percent of all married couples from 39 percent in 1970.
However, new research by two economists, Stephen Rose and Heidi Hartmann, shows that such measures substantially overstate what women earn over time. Women work far fewer hours than men on average and often drop out of the work force for years at a time. Usually they do so to raise children and tend to the family. The traditionally accepted measures of the gender wage gap track only those women who work full time for a full year -- at most about half of working women.
Rose, a social and economic research firm, and Hartmann, president of the Institute for Women's Policy Research (http://www.iwpr.org/), decided to study actual earnings histories of men and women over 15 years. They analyzed the in-depth interviews of the University of Michigan's Panel Study of Income Dynamics, which keep track of a representative sample of workers.
The researchers compared the earnings of men and women from 1983 to 1998 in the prime work years between ages 26 and 59.
What they found was over that period, women on average earned only 38 percent of what men did. Adding it up, the researchers found that the average woman earned $273,592 over 15 years, compared with $722,693 for men (in 1999 dollars).
Fewer work hours account for much of the difference. It turns out that fewer than half of the women earned income in all 15 years but 85 percent of the men did. About 30 percent of the women did not work at all for four or more years. By contrast, only one man in 27 was out of work so much.
Thus, the median income of two-worker families in any given year exaggerates the financial advantage to the family of the second working spouse. Some combination of social mores, necessity and, arguably, parental instinct drives spouses, typically wives, to stay home and tend to the family. Married women with children usually work less than unmarried women.
But hours alone do not account for all of the discrepancy in pay over time. The economists' analysis also turned up continuing evidence of gender segregation. A far higher proportion of females have had jobs that pay at the bottom of the income scale, and fewer of them climb to jobs of higher quality. Even when they are well educated, women predominantly take different kinds of jobs from those men do -- jobs that usually pay less.
For example, Hartmann and Rose divided jobs into three categories: elite, good and less-skilled. Among the relatively elite professional jobs, women were mostly teachers, nurses and social workers. Men were mostly business executives and scientists.
The middle level for women included secretarial positions, but for men it was typically well-paid blue-collar jobs.
In each tier, the researchers find, salaries are higher for the male-dominated categories than for the female categories, even though the educational requirements are similar.
Hartmann and Rose argue, most disturbingly, that these tendencies are self-reinforcing. Because wives usually earn less, they are more likely to give up their jobs to take care of children.
Women also often take low-paying temporary or part-time jobs that provide few benefits so they can be home for the family. This in turn creates a labor pool that business can consistently exploit, encouraging companies to orient their operations to use such low-paid workers rather than create better jobs.
And many researchers have found that there is a bias against women in the work force because employers assume there is a probability that they will drop out for family reasons. This often leads to underinvestment in women's careers and a tendency to hire them for dead-end jobs.
There are encouraging trends. Women are increasingly better educated. Government policies against discrimination have had success. And a service economy reduces the advantage men once had doing heavy labor in a manufacturing economy.
Yet problems persist including inherent prejudice in the labor markets, and effective public policies are called for.
First, stronger government programs to encourage paid family leave and more flexible hours will enable women to maintain long-term careers.
Second, the nation needs a serious commitment to quality day care for all as well as to the high-level personnel required for such work.
Third, Hartmann and Rose believe that there should be more federal support for discrimination oversight agencies, notably the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Office for Federal Contract Compliance Programs. They argue that regular audits of large corporations for discrimination against women would be valuable.
Such policies are often seen as costs to the nation, even by traditional liberals. But they would be likely to raise the nation's productivity by fully exploiting and enhancing the talents of women, and improving family life and the development of children. There is evidence they do just that in Europe and Scandinavia.
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