Young Women's Well-being Declined Gen X to Echo Boom

I haven't been writing for the blog lately, but I have been writing.

Mark Mather and I, along with the team at PRB, published a new report on the state of young women's well-being in the U.S. across four generations?

The news?
Not so great for Millennials.

There has been progress in some areas (rising educational attainment, falling rates of cigarette smoking and homicide) but dramatic reversals in others (rising rates of incarceration, poverty, suicide, and maternal mortality).

Read the full report:
Losing Ground Young Women’s Well-Being Across Generations in the United States

Or watch the video:

Time use and parenting

I came across two great links showing data on time use and parenting.

First, Nathan Yau (of flowingdata.com) compared his time use, activity space, and daily activity patterns pre- and post-baby. The results are striking.

Second, Wendy Wang crunched time use numbers for moms and dads, and working moms compared with stay-at-home moms, to compare activity patterns during the week with those on weekends. Some highlights:

• Dads, on average, do an hour more housework on weekends than during the week
• Working moms use the weekends to catch up on housework
• Working moms have less weekend leisure time than stay-at-home moms or dads

Pondering parental leave

In this week's State of the Union address, in discussing fair pay and family leave, President Obama said:

"...You know, she deserves to have a baby without sacrificing her job. A mother deserves a day off to care for a sick child or sick parent without running into hardship. And you know what, a father does too. It is time to do away with workplace policies that belong in a "Mad Men" episode. "

As my own maternity leave comes to an end, I find myself reflecting on this concept of gender and family equity in the workplace.

I am in a minority - lucky enough to have an employer with family friendly policies (not to mention an impressive history of gender equity). But during my years teaching at a community college, I was bombarded by stories of students who were demoted or fired by their employer while pregnant or passed over for promotion while caring for a family member. And these were not tall tales told by slackers. These were hardships related to me by my A+, always-in-class-early students. But these anecdotes are hardly surprising when we consider the data...

Selected employers notwithstanding, the United States has the weakest family leave policies of all 34 OECD member nations. In fact, U.S. family leave law is among the weakest in the world.

Source: Huffington Post with data from the International Labor Organization

The United States is the only nation that lacks a mandate for paid parental leave among 120 nations analyzed by the International Labor Organization and the U.S. is one of three countries in the world* with no paid parental leave.

I hardly think this is the type of American Exceptionalism we strive for.

HOW FAR DOES THE U.S. LAG?

According to OECD analysis reported by The Atlantic Bulgaria offers more than a year's worth of paid maternity leave (56 weeks) to women, while only the United States, Papua New Guinea, and Swaziland completely lack a national mandate for paid leave.

Among OECD countries, the average is 19 weeks of paid leave. In the United States mothers are now protected for up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave. But even that protection only applies to mothers who have been at their job for at least one year and who work at a large-enough company. Approximately 1 in 6 workers is employed by a company of fewer than 20 people, according to employer size statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Source: The Atlantic with data from OECD

But even if that hurdle is surmounted, maternity leave is only one piece of the puzzle. Many nations mandate both maternity and paternity leave (or some flexible combination of both) to families, to allow both mothers and fathers an opportunity to bond with their newborn.

Among OECD countries, Bulgaria offers more than 56 paid weeks of maternity leave to women. But others, like Norway, offer generous paternity leave, and some countries allow parents to divide up leave between the two parents however they choose.

While an argument can be made that paid parental leave can be a financial strain on small companies, there is compelling evidence that generous family leave policies are a major draw for employee recruitment and retention. In fact, after California passed a law mandating paid leave, many employers found a net positive result from improved family leave policies. As reported by the research group CEPR:

"Despite fears expressed by opponents of the program that PFL would create a heavy burden on the state’s employers the vast majority of employers we surveyed reported positive effects or no effect at all on their productivity, profitability, or performance."

Unfortunately, while three states (California, New Jersey, and Rhode Island) have mandated paid family leave, most states have not. And voluntary paid family leave is becoming increasingly rare. According to Bloomberg News:

"The share of employers offering time off with full pay after childbirth dropped to 5.2 percent in 2012 from 6.1 percent in 2005, according to a survey by the Family and Work Institute... Some 41.1 percent offered unpaid leave in 2012, while 15.5 percent said their policy depended on the situation, which often means it varies by job level."

Mad Men episode, indeed.



*Note: The ILO analysis was published in 1998. At that time Australia and New Zealand also had no mandated paid parental leave. 2012 analysis by the OECD shows that Australia and New Zealand now both mandate paid parental leave, but Papua New Guinea, and Swaziland do not.

What is killing white women?

An article by Monica Potts, "What's Killing Poor White Women?" led sociologist Erin Hoekstra to ask "Why Are Poor White Women Dying Younger than Their Moms?" (It should be noted that while the titles refer to "poor" women, both authors really mean women who lack at least a high school education.)

The authors note that among "white women who don’t graduate from high school... life expectancy has declined dramatically over the past 18 years."

Both authors imply that education and economic opportunity are likely the root of the problem. Potts writes:

Researchers have long known that high-school dropouts like Crystal are unlikely to live as long as people who have gone to college. But why would they be slipping behind the generation before them? James Jackson, a public-health researcher at the University of Michigan, believes it’s because life became more difficult for the least-educated in the 1990s and 2000s. Broad-scale shifts in society increasingly isolate those who don’t finish high school from good jobs, marriageable partners, and healthier communities. “Hope is lowered. If you drop out of school, say, in the last 20 years or so, you just had less hope for ever making it and being anything,” Jackson says. “The opportunities available to you are very different than what they were 20 or 30 years ago. What kind of job are you going to get if you drop out at 16? No job.”

While that may be true, (and indeed, education is linked to longer life expectancy in general) I suspect it is only part of the answer. Some of the decline may be even more basic: selection bias.

Women, particularly white women, have made huge gains in educational attainment and earnings in the past several decades. While the wage gap and other inequalities remain, progress is undeniable for a substantial proportion of women. But perhaps only the healthiest white women are taking advantage of this progress.

Perhaps there is a third factor contributing to both low educational attainment and poor health of white high school dropouts. Perhaps high school dropouts are subject to social, health, or emotional problems that result in both dropping out and poor(er) health.

Data link roundup (week of July 5, 2013)

The week's top data analysis links...
In light of the Texas filibuster (and subsequent second special session) this week's theme: facts and figures relating to reproductive rights

The Economist maps the current state of reproductive services available (or rather, not available), by county, in the United States.

Source: The Economist

Slate's new maps shows reproductive rights around the world including abortion laws, abortion restrictions, contraceptive laws (including hormone-based contraception, IUD, and condom laws), and much, much more...

Source: Slate

And last, but not least...
In a little-discussed, but highly relevant factor in the reproductive rights debate, The Economist charts the declining rate of abortions and abortion-related deaths since Roe v. Wade.

Source: The Economist

While correlation does not prove causality, the trend does provide a compelling case that legalization did not, in fact, increase abortions. What legalization did was reduce the number of maternal deaths.

BEST CHART OF THE WEEK

(See above...)

Data link roundup (week of March 8, 2013)

The week's top data analysis links in honor of International Women's Day


WHERE THE GLASS CEILING IS LOWEST

The Economist compiled data on workplace gender equity across more than two dozen countries. Indicators include: higher education, female labor force participation, difference between median earnings for full-time male and female workers, women in senior management as a percent of total, and child-care costs as a percent of average wage.

The result: New Zealand's glass ceiling appears to be highest, while women in Japan and South Korea are likely to suffer frequent headaches as they bump their heads against the barriers of workplace gender discrimination.

GENDER DIFFERENCE IN UPTALKING

New analysis of Jeopardy contestants show that men and women "uptalk" differently. Uptalk is characterized by rising intonation at the end of a sentence that makes the sentence sound like a question (think Valley Girl).

Findings, published in the journal Gender and Society show:

"The more successful a man is, the less likely he is to use uptalk; the more successful a woman is, the more likely she is to use uptalk."

MAKING MOUNTAINS OUT OF MOLEHILLS

Source: National Library of Australia

As discussed previously, despite media headlines, older mothers are not a new phenomenon.


REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS

Despite the fact that amniocentesis testing cannot be done until weeks 14-20 of a pregnancy, the state of Arkansas passed a law to prohibit the termination of a pregnancy after week 12. Amniocentesis tests alert parents to severe birth defects including neural tube deformities such as spina bifida.

In short, by prohibiting the termination of a pregnancy before amniocentesis can be performed, the new Arkansas law will force families to continue a pregnancy even if the baby cannot and will not survive birth.


FREAKONOMISTS TACKLE GENDER

The Freakonomics folks explore gender similarities and differences in a series of interviews, blog posts, and podcasts... (I may not concur with all views expressed in the podcast, but it is fascinating.)


OTHER GENDER EQUITY LINKS

From the Data Insights archives...

• Men aren't from Mars
• Unpaid labor - comparing the work of women and men
• Not the 'End of Men'
• Are men faster than women, or did they just get a head start?
• Who does the housework?

Men aren't from Mars

Men and women are more alike than they are different, after all! (Go figure...)

New research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology offers proof that there is more within-group variation between men and women than there is between-group variation.

From Science Daily...

"People think about the sexes as distinct categories," says Harry Reis, professor of psychology at the University of Rochester and a co-author on the study to be published in the February issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. "'Boy or girl?' is the first question parents are asked about their newborn, and sex persists through life as the most pervasive characteristic used to distinguish categories among humans."
But the handy dichotomy often falls apart under statistical scrutiny, says lead author Bobbi Carothers

Source: Science Daily

For more information see: "Men are not from Mars," a more thorough summary of the publication "Men and women are from Earth: Examining the latent structure of gender."

Breach of research ethics

The Wall Street Journal published a piece by data analyst and online-dater Amy Webb.

Webb went "undercover" by posting fictitious male profiles on JDate. Webb then used those profiles to collect data on how female JDaters interacted with her "male" avatars in the online world. She later used her findings to improve her own real profile and subsequently found a mate.

While I'm sure the WSJ intended to highlight the use of analytical skills in real-life decision-making, all I could do was sit in shock at the breach of research ethics.

Has anyone heard of informed consent?

And what about the golden rule: Do no harm?

While I am sure no online daters were in any physical danger during the course of this "research," I would argue that any sort of fraud or misrepresentation in the online dating world represents the potential for real emotional harm. (The case of Manti Te'o, of Notre Dame football and online dating fraud fame being the most recent headline example. While questions abound as to whether or not Te'o was in on the hoax, plenty of online fraudsters have hurt millions. See the Warrior Eli hoax, for example...)

Anyone who spent time e-flirting with JewishDoc1000 and LawMan2346 wasted time, effort, and (quite possibly) emotion on Webb's fraud.

It is doubly insulting that Webb summarizes her findings with an admonishment that women should dumb-down their online dating profiles...

Women: Don't mention work, especially if your job is difficult to explain. You may have the most amazing career on the planet, but it can inadvertently intimidate someone looking at your profile. I realize this sounds horribly regressive, but during my experiment I found that women were attracted to men with high-profile careers, while the majority of men were turned off by powerful women.

While Webb's breach of research ethics isn't as severe as Laud Humphreys' work in the 1960s, it violates the same rules that make his work an example of "what not to do" when conducting research on human behavior.

Shame on Ms. Webb for her sham. And shame on WSJ for lauding this "research."

Data link roundup (week of September 14, 2012)

The week's top data analysis links...

NO END OF MEN

In an article I published on Examiner, I debunk the data Hanna Rosin uses to make the case that there is an "End of Men."



LOWEST TEEN BIRTH RATE ON RECORD

New data released by the CDC shows that in 2010 the teen birth rate fell to its lowest recorded level in U.S. history. (Records for all births go back to the 1920s. Records for teen births are reported from 1960.)

Source: CDC

A brief summary of the CDC report can be found here.

Not the end of men

Every time I hear Hanna Rosin bemoan the "end of men," I cringe a little. I rolled my eyes at the dubious statistics rounded up in her Atlantic article and TED talk, and I expect to see similar mis-applications of data in her new book 'The End of Men: And the Rise of Women,' due out tomorrow.

To be clear: There is no "end of men."

While the United States may finally be nearing something more like gender equity, the sky is most certainly not falling for the Y chromosome.

Scare mongers cherry-pick statistics to prove their point, citing for example that:

"Most managers are now women too."
~H. Rosin, The Atlantic, July/August 2010

This statistic, by the way, is not true.

There are 8.19 million men in management occupations, compared with 5.25 million women, according to the 2010 American Community Survey. Within management, there are 1.44 million male "top executives" while there are only half a million women in similar roles.

With 50 percent more men than women in management overall, and nearly three times as many in top executive positions, one wonders where the "end of men" camp found their statistics.

It is true, however, that women are enrolling in and completing college at higher rates than their male peers. That said, the wage gap between men and women actually increases along the educational spectrum.

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, median weekly earnings of
full-time workers by sex and education level in 2011, author's calculations

Two trends jump out in this chart, which shows median weekly earnings of full time workers in 2011. First, higher levels of educational attainment correlate strongly with higher earnings. Second, there is a persistent wage gap between women and men across all educational levels. In fact, while women with less than a high school education are paid, on average, 20 percent less than their male counterparts, women with advanced degrees are paid only 74 cents for every dollar paid to men with similar educational qualifications.

One of the most common arguments for why women earn less than men is that they are more likely to work part time. This chart shows only full-time workers. Another, older, argument is that women historically had lower levels of educational attainment. These data also correct for any imbalances in education.

What remains is:

• Differences in occupational classifications (and there remain persistent differences in men's and women's work types).
• Differences in work history (including length of career and time spent not working, especially working mothers for maternity leave), although plenty of research shows that even time away from the job cannot explain all of the difference in the gender wage gap. The wage gap exists even between men and women who have never had children.
• Discrimination, which can be both wage discrimination by employers and self-discrimination in women expecting, and thus demanding, lower starting salaries during job negotiations

Admittedly, sensational headlines in late 2010, sparked by a study from marketing firm Reach Advisors, trumpeted the findings that young, urban women out-earned their male peers by 8 percent.

Many were quick to jump to the conclusion that the "gender wage gap" is fiction. Yet even the study authors admit that the data for that one, tiny, cohort (single, childless, women under age 30, living in major metropolitan areas) merely reflect increasing female educational attainment and do not reflect a pattern of reverse discrimination, or even that the gender gap is gone.

Persistent wage gaps and gender-segregated occupations hardly spell the demise of men.

Rosin also highlights the loss of manufacturing jobs as implying that burly men are no longer needed (her implication, not mine). However, there are more than 10 million manufacturing jobs in the United States, and the number has been growing over the past year, not declining.

rumors of men's demise have

been greatly exaggerated

This does not mean that all women are victims. This does not imply that all men discriminate. This does not show that all women are weak, or that all men are powerful.

What this fact-checking does show is that rumors of men's demise have been greatly exaggerated.

In a nation where women have had the right to vote for less than 100 years, growing signs of gender equality should be praised, not turned into a sensational headline that re-ignites the gender war.

There is no evidence that men are becoming obsolete, and by painting the data in that light, Rosin does a disservice to both women and men.

I plan to read Rosin's book, but with a critical eye for the details. To date, the "facts" used in building the case for the "end of men" have been dubious at best.

Unpaid labor - comparing the work of women and men

Despite substantial gains in gender equity (including the fact that women's educational attainment is now at parity with men's) there remains a sharp and continuing disparity in unpaid household labor when analyzed in aggregate at the national level.

While 83 percent of women do some form of housework on a typical day, only 65 percent of men do, according to 2011 statistics (from the American Time Use Survey).

The survey measures time spent on a typical day, across all activity types (from sleeping to eating to work and childcare) by the U.S. civilian noninstitutional population age 15 and over, on both weekdays and weekends.

Source: 2011 American Time Use Survey and author's calculations

Across the population, women do, on average, twice as much housework as men, before childcare is counted. Men out-housework women only in the lawn and garden category.

In childcare, the differences are even more dramatic. Women perform 2.3 times as much childcare-related work as men, on average.

However, when work-for-pay is a factor, men do more work than women, averaging 3.8 hours of paid work per day, compared with 2.6 for women.

Source: 2011 American Time Use Survey and author's calculations 

Nevertheless, if you add up both paid work and unpaid household work, women do more work, per day, on average, than men do. Across all work categories,* women total an average of 5.45 hours of work (2.82 unpaid) compared with a total of 5.27 for men (1.46 unpaid).

Somewhat surprisingly, the results of the Time Use Survey also show that women have an edge in the sleep department, reporting more hours of sleep than men on average. This trend persists across all household types, including families with young children. In households with a youngest child under age 6, women report spending 8.7 hours sleeping per day while men spend only 8.3.

While on the surface this trend implies that women get more rest than men, the details are not entirely clear. The sleep time trend may represent more time spent trying to sleep, as women also report substantially higher rates of difficulty in falling asleep and staying asleep than men.

The 2011 results are consistent with findings from prior years in American Time Use Survey.

*Note: Work categories, in this context, include housework, food preparation and cleanup, lawn and garden maintenance, household management, caring for household members, caring for non-household members, and work (for pay).

Who does the housework?

Earlier this year two researchers, Dr. Kristen Myers and Ilana Demantas, completed a study of the housework roles of unemployed men. Dementas interviewed twenty out of work men, and found that they were likely to have increased their housework responsibilities substantially during their period of unemployment. While Dementas' work may reflect changing gender roles and responsibilities, the sample size on the study is small.

Moreover, despite substantial gains in gender equity (including the fact that women's educational attainment is now at parity with men's) there remains a sharp and continuing disparity in unpaid household labor when analyzed in aggregate at the national level.

Sources: 2010 American Time Use Survey, author's calculations

While 84 percent of women do some form of housework on a typical day, only 67 percent of men do, according to 2010 statistics (from the American Time Use Survey).

Across the population, women do, on average, 50-70 percent more housework than men, before childcare is counted. In childcare, the differences are even more dramatic. Women perform twice as much childcare related work as men, on average.

The 2010 results are consistent with findings from prior years in American Time Use Survey.

Are men faster than women, or did they just get a head start?

I am working on the Gender Stratification lesson plan for an Intro to Sociology class I am teaching, and I came across the following piece of gender history:

Not until 1984 in Los Angeles would the women's marathon become a sanctioned Olympic event. Joan Benoit Samuelson, the winner, had attended high school in Maine, where women's track teams were not granted varsity status during her freshman and sophomore years. She won the 1975 state championship in the mile -- the longest distance a woman was allowed to run -- but because she insisted on practicing with the boys to improve her times, she was denied the school's most valuable athlete award. "That's when I said to myself, 'I'll show that coach -- I'm going to win an Olympic medal some day,' " Samuelson says. Nine years later she did.
NY Times (1996)

In the era of Title IX it is difficult to remember that less than a generation ago, women were not grated equal access to sports (not to mention certain educational or occupational opportunities). Improvements in gender equity since the 1960s have been rapid, but the effects of gender discrimination linger.

One of the most common excuses for excluding women from certain endeavors has always been that they are not as ______ as men (insert "strong," "fast," "smart," "tough," or any number of other adjectives here).

But are women really weaker or slower than men?

Or did they just get a late start?

Today's marathon world record, still held by Paula Radcliffe from the 2003 London Marathon, represents a pace that is equivalent to the fastest man on earth in the early 1960s. And while men's marathon times have remained (from a statistical perspective) roughly stable over the last century, dropping from 2:55 in 1909 to 2:03:59 in 2006, women's times have seen rapid improvement.

Comparatively speaking, men dropped about 50 minutes off of their record times (for an improvement of 29 percent over 100 years). During the same period women's record times dropped by more than three hours, for an improvement of 60 percent over the same 100 years.

Today the differential in men's and women's paces can be measured in seconds per mile, not minutes.

In 1980 only 10 percent of marathon runners were female. In 2009 the proportion reached 41 percent (data from Running USA). The share of women running in shorter races has risen even faster. In the half-marathon distance, women became the majority of runners in 2005.

And, perhaps most interestingly, women who enter ultra-marathons (any distance longer than 26.2 miles) have a substantially higher likelihood of completing the race than male entrants do.

So it is entirely possible that women can be just as fast as men, but got a late start in this game. Granted, there are runners who make a strong argument to the contrary by suggesting that over the last couple of decades the disparity in paces between men and women has remained roughly constant both in the marathon and in other distances.

This is one case where only time will tell.

Chart data source:
http://www.marathonguide.com/history/records/
data compiled by author

Chart of the Week: gender equity in the United States

I recently spoke at the 2011 Fair Housing Conference in San Diego, on the topic of gender equity. While I am quite familiar with the topic, even I was surprised by a few of the statistics I dug up for my talk. One that stood out clearly, despite substantial gains in gender equity (including the fact that women's educational attainment is now at parity with men's), is a sharp and continuing disparity in unpaid household labor.

According to the most recent statistics (from the American Time Use Survey), women in the United States do 70 percent more housework than men, before childcare is counted. After including childcare, women put in 75 percent more time on unpaid household activity than men. While 85 percent of women do some form of housework on a typical day, only 67 percent of men do.

The obvious next question is, what about paid work? Women today are almost as likely to hold a job outside the home as men are (72 percent of men and 60 percent of women are in the labor force). But men, on average, do still work more outside the home. When we add in the number of hours of paid work, the amount of work done by either sex is about even (average of 5.4 hours each on a typical day, any day of the week).

So the actual amount of work done each day by the sexes may not be terribly skewed, but the amount of work done for pay still shows substantial gender differences.

(For more current data, see December 2011 update.)