Rachel’s Musings

Cognitive dissonance is that feeling that we get when we believe something contradictory. It arises – to use the example from a textbook – when you think you should be on a diet but devour a huge bowl of chocolate mousse. You then start justifying your choice to minimize the dissonance.

Recently, I have been thinking about a specific cognitive dissonance: Ethical dissonance. Working at a large financial institution (FI) during the financial “crisis” is creating a lot of ethical dissonance for me. Already the fact that I put the crisis in quotes is a symptom of that: On the one hand, the higher ranks in the big FIs have profited greatly from their own disastrous decisions because the public bailed them out. None of the banksters had to give their bonuses or earnings back to right their wrongs. Then on the other, the real crisis is not in the financial services sector – it is amongst all the unemployed and former homeowners. It is amongst the rest of us who didn’t profit from scrupulous financial “innovation.” And that “innovation” continues, together with the profiteering off the backs of the rest of society. So, I think all that – and then I get paid by one of the FIs. Granted it’s not one of the worst (first attempt to minimize the dissonance). And I have to make a living somehow (another one). Plus, I am not working on any of those “innovative” products (piling up the anti-dissonance arguments). But, the bottom line is: I cannot get out of the ethical dissonance. Somehow I know that if all of us who are feeling this dissonance would quit, we could change this society that is so build around the adoration of the size of the paycheck (hmmm, I wonder what that replaced ). And I also know that to really remove the ethical dissonance, I would have to quit my job. In some ways, though, that feels like self-sabotage but maybe that is just another excuse I conjure up to relieve the dissonance without doing what is right.

Via the Facebook page of the National Sexuality Resource Center, I found a report from the Pew Research Center on marriage and how wives are rising (whatever that’s supposed to mean). Reading the first paragraph, I decided that I needed to change my evening plans and respond to this.

The institution of marriage has undergone significant changes in recent decades as women have outpaced men in education and earnings growth. These unequal gains have been accompanied by gender role reversals in both the spousal characteristics and the economic benefits of marriage.

The first part of the first sentence is correct: The institution of marriage has undergone significant changes. They have been very well documented by historians like Stephanie Coontz. But these changes were not driven by the outpacing of women’s eduction and earnings. These changes go back a bit further to the mid 1700s when love entered as the primary reason for marriage. Most of the changes in the last century were driven by changes in the laws that, first, set husbands and wives on equal footing (prior to that wives were covered by the husband) and, then, by changes in divorce law.

The rest of the paragraph suggests that women have made big strides in income. The wage gap between men and women has primarily closed because men’s earnings have stagnated or went down. Additionally, the Institute for Women’s Policy Research reports that the closing of the earnings gap has “slowed considerably since 1990.” Hardly something to celebrate.

Pew compares data from 1970 and 2007. In 1970, 4% of husbands were married to women with higher income. In 2007 that percentage had risen to 22%. Although these numbers are based on incomes adjusted for inflation, they should also be adjusted for labor force participation rate and the wage gap. In 1970, a woman earned less than 60 cents for every dollar a man earned; by 2007 that gap had narrowed to 78%. Or put differently – and this is based on a table in the full Pew report on page 8 – in 1970, a women who graduated college barely made more than a man with less than a high school degree (about $2,500 more). By 2007, a female college graduate made slightly more than a man with some college (less than $4,000 more; whereas a male college graduate made more than $20,000 more than a woman with the same level of education). Hardly something to celebrate.

Also, did they adjust for the change in age at first marriage? Pew is looking at 30- to 44-year-olds. In 1970, this age group was more likely to be married than their 2007 counterparts, especially the women.

But wait, here’s another interesting paragraph (from page 10 – as I was trying to get to Appendix B):

For married adults with some college education or married adults with a high school diploma, men’s median household incomes also grew more than women’s from 1970 to 2007. Recall that during this same period, median earnings of men in these education groups declined, while those of women in those education groups grew.

Huh? Let’s unpack this a bit. The first thing we need to find out: Exactly what is a household? Pew used IPUMS data, which is based on Census data. According to an IPUMS report, households can be made up of married couples and people living alone. And on page 7 of the Pew report is this note: “’Household income’ refers to household income adjusted for the number of members in the household.” Appendix B (page 35) reveals that this is not a simple calculation since there are economies of scale. Okay, fine. But a household can still consist of one or more people. Are we comparing household income to individual earnings? If so, maybe the household adjustment factor skews the data… (It’s not clear to me if the earnings are also based on a household).

What about income vs. earnings? Okay, I got tired of trying to find definitions on the IPUMS site and went to the Census bureau instead. According to definitions that were a bit easier to find, earnings are what you & I get paid on the job (see page 53). Income is earnings plus things like interest, dividends and public assistance. So, income is likely to be larger than earnings for a person who has at least some money in the bank in an interest bearing account. Maybe men made up the gap between earnings and income with investments? Whereas women relied more on earnings? And note that the whole wives rising celebration is based on the hair splitting between income and earnings. If we include all money (potentially) available to a person, men are still ahead of women. Hardly something to celebrate.

Now the table I find most interesting is in the Pew report on page 28. If women have made such terrific strides, outpacing men in education and earnings growth, wouldn’t they start contributing more to a household income? Yes, they would – and they do! In 1970, they contributed 6% and in 2007, they’re contributing 36%. Men’s shares are 99% and 72% for the two years. Okay, that’s roughly 1/3 from women and 2/3 from men in 2007. The rise of wives?!?

Incidentally, the chart on page 3 shows another interesting story that Pew totally missed because they were so set on presenting the myth that women are doing so well in marriage: Median adjusted household income for our 30- to 44-year olds has risen steadily IF these folks were married. For unmarried men and unmarried women, the income growth came to a halt in 1990 when both men and women had lower incomes when they were unmarried (note that this could be a factor of several things, not just marital status discrimination: Age – younger people are more likely to earn less and be unmarried – and the impact of the other income in a household – maybe married women’s household income is so much higher because men earn so much more).

There is lots of interesting stuff in the Pew report but, as happens so often, the rising wives story seems to be small changes blown out of proportion to bolster marriage. So what if wives earn more than their husbands? In an equal world this would happen about 50% of the time – it happens 22% of the time (and note, too, that $1 more could tip the balance…). Most of the touted rise by wives is simply catching up with men… Hardly something to celebrate. The real stories in the data – such as the gaps between men and women, black and white, married and unmarried – don’t make the headlines.

UpdateHere is a really cool video put together by newsy.com that gives a summary of news coverage on this study. It’s interesting that they say that the number of wives outearning their husband has more than quadrupled. Well, yes 22% is more than four times 4% but it still means that more than 2/3 of husbands earn more than their wives… But the matrimania award goes to ABC news!

Another update: The Council on Contemporary Families has also done some myth busting on this study.

(Let me add a quick disclaimer: I did not read the report word for word, so I might have missed other gems or bloopers. I read the intro paragraph and got mad. After that, I looked at the charts and tables. Having worked in data analysis for over a decade, I know that numbers are harder to manipulate than their interpretation. I did read Appendix B on the methodology and looked in vein for the critical definitions, which I then located elsewhere. From what I’ve seen in the report, the claim that wives are rising is unfounded, as I have outlined above.)

This week’s Too Much includes an in depth look at a new meta-analysis about the impact of a society’s income inequality on that society’s citizen’s health. It’s a puzzle that apparently epidemiologists have been working on for a while but it was fairly recently brought to the forefront again when a comparison between the US and European countries showed that the US fares worse even though we spend a lot more on health care (I’ll see if I can dig up that article again…). Nothing seemed to explain the discrepancy, though, it’s obvious that the reporting ignored consistent findings that showed that the income gap seems to be a strong contender. According to the new meta-analysis:

The results suggest a modest adverse effect of income inequality on health, although the population impact might be larger if the association is truly causal. The results also support the threshold effect hypothesis, which posits the existence of a threshold of income inequality beyond which adverse impacts on health begin to emerge.

The US has clearly passed that threshold. Most of the extra mortality occurs in the US, the country with the widest income gap. How much of an impact?

Of the deaths the new BMJ study ties to inequality, almost 900,000 came in the United States.

Too Much last week asked a leading U.S. epidemiologist, Dr. Stephen Bezruchka of the University of Washington School of the Public Health, to place that calculation in perspective.

“We can say,” he noted, “that one in four deaths can be attributed to our high rates of income inequality.”

That’s about three times the number of deaths attributed to smoking… An editorial in the British Medical Journal gives more background.

I just sold my bed. A queen-size bed that no longer fits my down-sized lifestyle. I want smaller, thank you, easier to move. But I am noticing that it’s rather emotional to let go of this stuff like a bed! I’ve shared many a night with that bed, after all. It was a strange contraption – a combination of a fancy Natura bed and a huge mattress on top. The frame has been with me for a decade or so. The mattress only a few years. All of it come with stories, though. After all, two boyfriends have shared that bed with me at some point. And I felt the discovery of the luxurious freedom of choosing to be single in it. Of course, my letting go of it also symbolizes all the other changes going on in my life: Moving from being a single mother to having an empty nest. Exploring a new direction of my work life. Selling the bed crystallizes all this: My life will not be the same going forward. It is a loss and it is a new beginning. Fortunately, I already know that I can sleep well in my new bed: A simple full-size futon couch. Life goes on. In fact, it might even get better without all the old baggage!

Lillian B. Rubin writes in the Fall 2009 issue of Dissent Magazine:

Only a serious conversation about the meaning of democracy in our fractious and increasingly diverse nation – a conversation that confronts the costs and realities of an uninformed and disinformed voting public, one that challenges our current election practices that have made money so vital to a candidate’s hopes; a conversation that, on a broader level, examines our focus on the private and the individual at the expense of the public, the community, and the collective good – only such a public conversation will lead us closer to that more perfect democratic union we all say we seek but which too few have been willing to enable.

I find it hard sometimes not to see conspiracies. Conspiracy theories are usually associated with mental illness but sometimes things just seem to fit together so nicely, I begin to wonder if someone (or some group) is orchestrating things. Though, the synchronicity might be entirely a coincident brought together by similar forces working toward similar aims. So, where’s the conspiracy here? Well, California’s public education is being dismantled. Instead of informing the public more, we’re informing the public less. With the end-effect that true democracy becomes ever more elusive keeping the current elites in power (and well educated through private education). How convenient. Though maybe the intend is not to undermine democracy through the defunding of public education. But that sure is the effect.

San Francisco State University, one of the important universities in the state of California, was closed yesterday and will be closed again on Tuesday. They just want more time off, right? Not exactly. These are forced times off affecting the quality of education (classes are cancelled) and endanger the university’s ability to retain good faculty (who’d want to stay at a place that forces unpaid vacation down your throat?!?).

I’ve decided that I will email my state reps on every furlough day that I don’t have classes. I’d like to encourage all fellow students to do the same! Maybe if we can make enough noise, we can actually reverse this ridiculous trend of mortgaging our future…

In general, furloughs are on the rise as Robert Reich points out: “At the same time, furloughs — requiring workers to take unpaid vacations — are on the rise: recent surveys show 17% of companies imposing them.”

Yet, the highest paid CEOs in 2008 forked in the money: Goldman Sachs ($42,946,801), American Express ($42,940,941) and Citigroup ($38,237,437). They alone could’ve closed the CSU budget gap with a pay cut. Well, okay, maybe not quite, the funding cut enacted by the California legislature and the governator was $584 million… Certainly they could’ve also used that money to prevent layoffs at their own companies. For example, the number of employees laid off by Citigroup in 2008 was 75,000. (See the most excellent report from the Institute for Policy Studies on “America’s Bailout Barons” for more information).

There is something seriously wrong with a society where CEOs make 319 times what the average worker makes; where education budgets are slashed forcing students and teachers to scramble to avoid the almost inevitable decrease in the quality of education. Instead of No Child Left Behind testing, education should be adequately funded – from kindergarten through grad school. If we’d curb the executive excesses, we would be able to prevent financial bubbles (and meltdowns) and adequately fund the future of our children. All of our children, not just the kids of the rich executives.