MIDDLE class men can’t even dream in many cases of supporting a family without sending their wives to work. But what worries Claudia Goldin, president of the American Economic Association and a professor at Harvard? She is concerned that women lawyers and corporate executives, who clearly work fewer hours and less continuous hours than men, are not making enough money relative to men.

In her recent paper, risibly titled “A Grand Gender Convergence,” Goldin becomes the fourteenth million academic to study pay differentials between men and women. She throws all kinds of figures into the computer, which is the looking glass of future equality. She uses these figures with the assumption that men and women are autonomous units and not interdependent. The fact that many men are supporting women  is not something that seems to cross her mind. Goldin found that women are “converging” with men in that they have equal salaries in most professions until that point in which women start working fewer hours or more “flexible” hours. That’s not right. That’s not right. The business world should not be structured in such a way that it rewards people who are around when their employers need them.

Goldin writes:

“[T]he gender gap in pay would be considerably reduced and might vanish altogether if firms did not have an incentive to disproportionately reward individuals who labored long hours or worked particular hours. Such change has already occurred in various sectors, but not in enough.”

She disgracefully evades the issue as to how companies are going to accomplish certain tasks when employees are not around with lots of graphs and charts.

— Comments —

Bob L. writes:

You write:

Middle class men can’t even dream in many cases of supporting a family without sending their wives to work.

Is this really so? Certainly, that is true if ‘supporting a family’ means dining out regularly, taking expensive vacations, driving a Lexus instead of a Hyundai, living in the city center or a McMansion with marble countertops instead of a modest house in a suburb with safe schools, sending your children to expensive colleges, buying your children $400 video game systems with $60-a-pop games. These are all things that many people want, and many see these things as necessities. But they are not necessities in any real sense.

Certainly, it has become more difficult for a family to do okay on just the husband’s income. But with an average, middle-class job, it is certainly possible if a family chooses to make the choice to forgo some material possessions for something better. That does not happen, however, unless a man says, “No, we do not need these things. We will make a choice to be different and forgo temporary luxuries for something more lasting. We need you, my wife, to stay home and create a warm and nurturing environment for our family.”

Laura writes:

Note that I said “in many cases.” It depends on what we define as middle class and cost-of-living factors. I entirely agree that foregoing many unnecessary expenses makes it possible for some to live on a middle class salary, but in other cases, it is very tough.

Let’s say a policeman makes $40,000 or $50,000 a year and works in area where the average house costs $300,000 and taxes on that house are about $4,000 per year. The housing price is affected by the fact that all around people are living on two incomes. Of course, he can move farther away and maybe spend an hour driving to work, which will cost him a lot too, but he will find it difficult to make ends meet. There may be many areas with cheap housing that are out of the question because they are crime-ridden.

Thomas F. Bertonneau writes:

If you were here looking me in the face, you would see me agape.  Did Claudia Goldin really write these words: “[T]he gender gap in pay would be considerably reduced and might vanish altogether if firms did not have an incentive to disproportionately reward individuals who labored long hours or worked particular hours. Such change has already occurred in various sectors, but not in enough”?

It is “disproportionate,” she contends, to “reward individuals who have labored long hours or worked particular hours.”  Really?  And what does that phrase, “particular hours,” mean – from seven-thirty until six instead of from ten until four or six days a week instead of four-and-a-half?  Goldin’s mentality is that of a spoiled brat.  God save us…

Laura writes:

Yup, that’s what she said. And she’s president of the American Economic Association and has a long list of distinctions.

Since you are an English professor, you may  appreciate the two opening paragraphs of her paper:

Of the many advances in society and the economy in the last century the converging roles of men and women are among the grandest. A narrowing has occurred between men and women in labor force participation, paid hours of work, hours of work at home, life-time labor force experience, occupations, college majors and education, where there has been an overtaking by females.1 And there has also been convergence in earnings, on which this essay will focus. Although my evidence is for the United States, the themes developed are more broadly applicable.

These parts of the grand gender convergence occupy various metaphorical chapters in the history of gender roles in the economy and society. But what must be in the “last” chapter for there to be real equality?

Caroline writes:

Just looking at Goldin’s picture and her pompous face makes me miss Lawrence Auster all over again. I still think of him often. We shall not see his like again.

Speaking of banal, it saddens me to think that women of my generation and younger often have no clue that there was a time when women didn’t “have” to work; that men were once ashamed to have their wives’ go to work. It reflected badly on their ability (the men’s) prowess as the provider. A friend’s daughter posted on Facebook:

I’m thinking I need a sick sitter when I can’t send my daughter to school. I would love to hear what everyone else does in this situation and if anyone has any ideas as to how I can find someone.

First of all, the child is less than two. A child that age isn’t in “school,” the word seems like a pleasant euphemism for the reality and pain of daycare. The mother has a demanding job, as does the father, and it’s true the housing prices of that area need both parents to work. Still, it’s sad and tragic for families that working mothers are the norm now in our society.

Dan R. writes:

I had the misfortune of becoming initiated in politics at the end of the 1960s and, thankfully, my views have changed since then.  I come from a left-wing family background and was amused when I read Caroline’s comment that “men were once ashamed to have their wives go to work.”  I was a young radical and supporter of feminism in the summer of 1969, when our family–my parents and all three children–drove from New York to California, spending time with my uncle, who was a formerly active union organizer and, at a minimum, a “pinko.”  He loved talking politics and was a smart guy and tough debater.  At one point I challenged him as to why his wife didn’t go to work, and his response was emphatic and unforgettable: “I wouldn’t let her go to work!”  Unfortunately, I never had the occasion to ask him about that years later, when the winds had changed.

Sage McLaughlin writes:

I often see remarks like Bob L.’s and wonder what his current station is in life, that he thinks a family for whom the wife goes to work must of necessity own a Lexus and live with lots of extravagances and extras, like expensive meals on the town and so forth. This is an uncharitable cliche you often hear from conservatives, but ignores the fact that the standards and expectations established by feminism have become in many ways economically self-perpetuating. Feminism extends its reach by radically inflating the cost of a college education while radically deflating its value (flooding colleges with as many female sociology majors as possible has contributed much more significantly to this phenomenon than has affirmative action for blacks), or by creating a massive and unnecessary glut in labor that in turn depresses wages for everyone.

At any rate, it is actually the case that a family driving a luxury car is less likely to have both parents working, as a woman spending her days at home is now considered a privilege that only the wealthy can afford (the bitterness directed by women who are working at those who are not is often driven by think kind of envy). I have seen many counterexamples up close, of course, of young couples whose expectations for a large house and multiple new cars are unreasonable. However, this isn’t the main reason that women are working outside the home these days, except in very rich locales like the Washington, DC metroplex. On the whole, the ability of a reasonably educated man to get married and support a family is more constrained than at any time in recent memory, and the conditions that prevailed when the Baby Boomers were forming families simply no longer obtain.

 Laura writes:

It is genuinely very difficult for a middle class couple to make it on one income in many parts of the country, especially since male middle class wages are, when adjusted for inflation, much lower than they were in the 60s. But instead of addressing this problem, female careerism is celebrated. The problem is self-perpetuating because the high number of working mothers is not considered a serious problem.

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