I had a friend in college whose mother was widowed. I don't remember what she did for income, but I remember her moving into my neighborhood from a beautiful ranch house on the outskirts of town. She moved into a house that was about 900 square feet. Later, as a single parent, I moved into a house very similar. There were two bedrooms, a living room, a very small kitchen (we could reach the refrigerator from the table), a bathroom with bathtub, sink and toilet. There was a laundry room off the kitchen that was big enough for the appliances and a few shelves. The house I rented had a garage. I don't remember what if my friend's mother did. It seemed so harsh for her to have to move there just because her husband died, but no one came to her aid with a better job. This was the status of women when I was growing up. It was fine for men to ask to be paid a sufficient amount to raise a family, because they were often the breadwinner for the family. Men who drove trucks (like my dad) made good money because they had a union and because they had a family. They weren't expected to get by with less. Now I know there are a lot of families out there that did not have that experience, but those were the general expectations of the fifties and sixties.
In 1970, I read an amazing book: The Economics of Being a Woman, by Dee Dee Ahern. There are still about 40 copies on Amazon, if you shop there. It taught me about the assumption that women's work was worth less than men's. that women often gave up valuable years of income to raise a family, which was never recouped. That affected their social security benefits, so that in later years, they had less income as well. In effect, women who stayed home and raised the family were doing it for free. As such, they were not entitled to some of the monetary benefits men received. At that time, the average woman's salary was 70% of a man's.
In 2001, census results revealed that:
"Of the 100 million people 15 and over who were full-time, year-round workers with earnings in 2001, 41 percent were women and 59 percent were men. Women were more likely to have lower earnings. For example, 4.4 percent of women, compared with 2.8 percent of men, reported earnings of less than $10,000. At the opposite end of the earnings distribution, only 5.5 percent of women reported earnings of $75,000 or more in 2001, compared with 15.8 percent of men.
Fast forward to 2016, or even the census of 2010. Women now earn 80% of men's salaries. At this rate, my great-great-great-granddaughters will be close to earning the same as men. Some of the changes that have occurred since I was a child are the cost of housing (now requires two incomes), the cost of medical services (now requires insurance) and the cost of food (did it ever go down when gas prices went down?). Most concerning of all these statistics is the poverty rate for the children, which I will tackle in a future post. If children tend to attain the same educational level as their mother (and I can't cite the source on this, I heard it on NPR), then our future civilization needs to examine why women tend to receive less pay, less retirement income and less ability to attend school or send their children to school.
*United States Census Bureau, 2003, Women and Men in the United States 2003 Population Characteristics, P20-544, http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/p20-544.pdf, retrieved 28 Mar 2016.
In 1970, I read an amazing book: The Economics of Being a Woman, by Dee Dee Ahern. There are still about 40 copies on Amazon, if you shop there. It taught me about the assumption that women's work was worth less than men's. that women often gave up valuable years of income to raise a family, which was never recouped. That affected their social security benefits, so that in later years, they had less income as well. In effect, women who stayed home and raised the family were doing it for free. As such, they were not entitled to some of the monetary benefits men received. At that time, the average woman's salary was 70% of a man's.
In 2001, census results revealed that:
"Of the 100 million people 15 and over who were full-time, year-round workers with earnings in 2001, 41 percent were women and 59 percent were men. Women were more likely to have lower earnings. For example, 4.4 percent of women, compared with 2.8 percent of men, reported earnings of less than $10,000. At the opposite end of the earnings distribution, only 5.5 percent of women reported earnings of $75,000 or more in 2001, compared with 15.8 percent of men.
Of the 109 million families in 2001,
5 percent had an income below
$10,000, 64 percent had an income
of $10,000 to $74,999, and 31 percent had an income of $75,000 or
more. The type of family also matters, because often both spouses
are employed. Among married-couple families in 2001, only 2 percent had an income below $10,000
and 37 percent had an income of
$75,000 or more. Of the families
maintained by women with no
spouse present, 17 percent had an
income below $10,000 and only 8 percent had an income of
$75,000 or more. In contrast, of
the families maintained by men
with no spouse present, only 8 per-
cent had an income below $10,000
and 17 percent had an income of
$75,000 or higher.
In 2001, 12.9 percent of the female
population and 10.4 percent of the
male population lived below the
poverty level. Poverty rates were
highest for children: the proportions of boys and girls (those under
18) who were poor were not statistically different (16.4 percent and
16.2, respectively). From ages 18
to 64, the poverty rate was11.6 percent for women and 8.5
percent for men. For those 65
years and over, the poverty rate
was 12.4 percent for women com-
pared with 7.0 percent for men."*
*United States Census Bureau, 2003, Women and Men in the United States 2003 Population Characteristics, P20-544, http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/p20-544.pdf, retrieved 28 Mar 2016.
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