THESE TABLES, which show the changes in median earnings from 1947 to 2009 for men and women employed full-time, were included in a recent post. I am publishing them again to draw further attention to these remarkable figures. From 1973 to 2009, the median earnings of full-time male workers over 15 years old decreased by an average of .1 percent a year. The median earnings for women during that same period increased by .8 percent per year.

In that 36-year period, the rates of divorce and illegitimacy soared. What is the lesson here? The more economic autonomy women gain, the more families dissolve or fail to form.

(CTME in the second table stands for Comparative Total Median Earnings for Wage and Salary workers 15 years old and older. This is the proportion of women’s earnings compared to men’s.)

Labor Status From 1947 to 1973 for Men 

                                              — Comments —

Jesse Powell, who tabulated the above figures, writes:

I’d like to add here, women’s earnings as compared to men should be 60 cents on the dollar. When women earn more than that it is a sign of one of two things; that women are putting more emphasis than they should on the working world or that men are putting less emphasis than they should on work. [Laura writes: I’m not sure where you get the 60 cents figure. You are saying that if women on the whole make less than 60 percent on the dollar, that is harmful?] Women earning 60 percent of what men make conforms with the natural strengths of men and the natural strengths of women. Making money in the market economy is generally “men’s territory.” When a woman dedicates herself to making money she is wasting her resources and misapplying her talents by putting her efforts towards a masculine endeavor where she is naturally the weaker and disadvantaged party. 

In addition to the fact that paid work is better suited to men, the natural balance of power is disrupted by women gaining economic power at men’s expense. The result is indeed families dissolving or failing to form in the first place; this is because family formation and family stability are functions that the man performs. 

I want to further point out, the time from 1973 to 2009 was a time of decrease in the rate of increase in wages for both men and women; from 1960 to 1973 median earnings for men grew at 2.7% a year and for women grew at 2.2 percent a year; from 1973 to 2009 earnings for men declined -0.1% a year and grew for women at 0.8% a year; so in comparative terms the wages of both men and women declined compared to the high growth that both men and women enjoyed prior to 1973. This shows that the overall functioning and productivity of the workforce declined after 1973 in the same way that the functioning of the family life declined after 1973. Men’s power in relation to women fell within the family after 1973 leading to failure and dysfunction within the family realm; in the same way men’s power within the workforce fell after 1973 leading to dysfunction in the workplace. 

Paid work, “participation in the workforce,” is a masculine pursuit and is especially unsuited to married women. The decline in men’s power is harmful to both men and women in regards to family life but is also harmful to both men and women in the economic realm as well.

Laura writes:

Jesse writes,

When women earn more than that it is a sign of one of two things; that women are putting more emphasis than they should on the working world or that men are putting less emphasis than they should on work.

It’s important to include government benefits in any equation that looks at women’s earnings. Welfare for single mothers was a major factor in disrupting the black family, leading to what we see today.  The theory that economic autonomy for women – either through paid work or government benefits – inexorably leads to family dissolution and the failure of families to form is dramatically upheld by the changes in black America in the past 50 years. White America is now replicating much of that disaster.

Jesse writes:

I have done some research on the subject of women’s earnings compared to men in the past and just for a sampling I will give you some of the hourly earnings for men and women in different manufacturing job categories for the year 1899 (the numbers given are cents per hour): Bread and other bakery products; Men 17.69, Women 8.33 (47 percent): Shirts; Men 19.53, Women 10.62 (54 percent): Printing and Publishing, book and job; Men 23.54, Women 11.88 (50 percent). 

Comparing the earnings of men and women for all manufacturing jobs gives the following ratios (comparing men’s overall hourly earnings in manufacturing to women’s): 1899, 53 percent; 1904, 54 percent; 1909, 54 percent; 1914, 53 percent; 1919, 54 percent; 1921, 54 percent. 

Now, you have to keep in mind that these figures from 1899 to 1921 only count manufacturing employment; about one fourth of women and one fourth of men were employed in manufacturing during the early 1900s. It may be that manufacturing in general was more suited to men than to women in which case the earnings ratio for women should be higher in the other occupations that women held leading the overall earnings ratio of women to be greater than the 53 percent or 54 percent that one finds in the manufacturing sector. 

I also have a specific earnings ratio for women compared to men which includes all full-time year round wage and salary workers in 1940; in 1940 the median wage for men (who worked year-round full-time) was $1,362 for the year and for women was $788; a ratio of 57.9 percent. 

Now, when comparing the earnings of men and women it is always good to compare like with like. When women earned 60% of what men earned from 1960 to 1980 what was being compared is Median Earnings of All Full-Time Year-Round Workers; the statistic I found for 1940 of 57.9 percent is comparing the same thing. 

Comparing full-time women workers to full-time men workers in 1900 may exclude almost entirely married women since very few married women worked full-time during that era; comparing all full-time women workers to all full-time male workers may be comparing married men of all ages to single women who are typically under 30 years old for the most part. Such demographic composition factors may need to be kept in mind when interpreting this kind of data. 

Regardless of all that, my first impression of the first data I have found on the subject of women’s earnings compared to men in the distant past lead me to believe that the idea that women have earned about 60% of what men earn for a long time is basically correct.

Jesse adds:

After doing a bit more research on this subject I have found that women’s relative wages compared to men overall, for all job categories, was 63% in 1920; higher than the 60 percent it was in 1980. For all manufacturing jobs women’s earnings were 54 percent that of men in 1921; this implies that indeed women’s wages were higher compared to men in non-manufacturing settings; furthermore since women’s earnings were a constant ratio to men’s in manufacturing from 1899 to 1921 it seems reasonable to infer that women’s earnings compared to men overall were also essentially constant from 1899 to 1921 meaning that women earned a little more than 60 percent of what men earned going all the way back to 1899. [Source: Women’s Wages and Work in the Twentieth Century\

Interestingly enough, this “60% rule” may even apply to other countries as the wage ratio of women compared to men was 55.8 percent in 1977 in Japan. One can even find this 60 percent ratio in the Bible where in Leviticus 27 it says that an adult woman is worth 30 shekels while an adult man is worth 50 shekels.

Laura writes:

Just to clarify, this does not mean that if you took the average woman in any given occupation at any given experience level and compared her with the average man in the same occupation at the same level, the woman’s salary would be at these percentages. This is the average salary of all women in manufacturing compared to the average salary of men. From 1899 to 1921, most women were not in paid employment when they were married.

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