What Is the Male Marriage Premium?
econlog.econlib.org
econlog.econlib.org
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264513198_Penalizin...
There is clearly a correlation between men having children and men getting higher salaries, and the reverse for women. However, this may reflect the fact that women are more likely to withdraw from work to take care of children (regardless of whether they'd prefer to), and men may double down on work.
Women are more likely to incur a penalty for taking time off due to child care needs, but that is largely because they are more likely to do so in the first place. Men do this much less often. However, there is evidence that the relatively small number of men who do this pay an unusually heavy career penalty for it.
This can be a problem for women. If we reduce the stigma for taking time off and provide generous leave, but only for women, but penalize men for doing this, then we actually end up putting even more pressure on women to carry this obligation.
/dons firesuit
Discussing marriage, pregnancy, childbearing status or the like is an absolute no-go for employers. So, the ideal solution is to consider all women capable of this.
Because of women's protected status of childbearing and leaving/returning, it would seem from a pure business perspective, that women are liabilities that can leave the job at any time and get it back, legally. What is this... scheduling latitude actually worth? I'd really like to see statistics on this. But on a sniff-test, this seems probably true and the reason why women are paid less: more risk.
Men don't have the same options here, at least in the US. Ideally, to "Level the Playing Field", I'd like to see men with the same rights as women. But alas, we're not really headed into more workers' rights territory.
Oh absolutely. That's why I'm coming at this from a purely business/economics viewpoint. It's stark, dehumanizing, and pretty damned depressing.
I'd also argue, it's very much true (as in, fact practiced regularly, not a value judgement).
> That's why government regulation is important if we want a different result.
I agree. However, the majority party in office (in the USA) now wants nothing more than to repeal any and every business law and regulation. I do not see us little people with getting these kinds of equality laws passed. If anything, I'd expect that the meager protections women have would arguably be demolished.
Most of all it's pretty short sighted and myopic. Even from a strictly economical perspective, and assuming all of the above is correct, we need new generations of people to be born, and someone needs to take care of them.
If women would be penalised for taking time off they would be less inclined to have children, at least if they have a well paying job. The long term consequences of that are quite bad.
Greedy algorithms are never optimal in macro economics. The local maxima are never global.
Sweden recognized this problem - it created very generous programs for women, but realized that this was providing an incentive for women to leave the workforce, often in their 30s, an important decade for rising through the ranks, while men remained in the workforce. They then created more generous incentives for me, but discovered that the men weren't taking them - partly because of social and organizational pressure not to (perhaps related to the article I posted above). They finally created a very generous "use it or lose it" system where the men were just walking away from too much benefit not to take the policy, and I believe launched a major campaign to get men to take the leave. The idea is to create enough of a critical mass that the "male child leave" stigma would fade and this would become the norm.
Even as a fairly libertarian person, I didn't mind it, since it's just an option, nobody's forcing anyone to take it. And nudging fathers to take a more active role in child rearing is definitely a good investment for society, even economically speaking.
I'm not sure it had much of an effect though, at least in my circles I haven't noticed any big shift in paternal leave taking. And I must say that at certainly for the last 10 years there's been no stigma at all around it, again in my circles.
Right, it's a tragedy of the commons type situation. Each individual actor (business) is incentivized to focus on just what solely benefits them the most, but if every actor does that, everyone ends up losing.
Or rather, why doctor training should not be capped in the USA.
If training was not capped, we could expect different results and there would be no argument concerning male/female, given the expense of training.
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/02/what_is_the_fem....
It is as equally thoughtful as the source of this HN thread.
What Is the Female Marriage Penalty?
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/02/what_is_the_fem....
Policy Implications of the Marriage Premium
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2013/03/policy_implicat....
9 Short Observations about the Marriage Premium
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2013/03/22_short_argume....
I have seen this from both sides of the equation: I was a full time wife and mom for a lot of years. Then, I got divorced. I told my sons I would rather they take over the "women's work" so I could put more into my job than for them to get some kind of part time, minimum wage job.
This is basically a form of transferring her energy to him and the employer paying for getting the extra energy and mental focus he can now bring to the table. This works reasonably well (societally speaking) in a traditional society where women are primarily homemakers and moms. It works less well in a world where people are getting married later, we are actively discouraging people from having more kids because there are already more than 7 billion people on the planet, etc. We need to find another answer, one that allows for young, single people, childless couples, etc to all have full lives. Otherwise, it is just the married men who get The Good Life and everyone else is shorted.
Maybe marriage makes men work more hours; maybe it makes them work harder per hour; maybe it makes them control their tempers better; maybe all of these and more.
It gives zero credit to the wife somehow genuinely enhancing his life by cooking, cleaning, having sex with him, etc. It just suggests that married men choose to be more virtuous. Done.
If I weren't married with kids, I'd be a semi-retired snowboard instructor. I am not driven by my career at all. I'm good at it, and I make good money, but I wouldn't otherwise be doing it.
My point is they have two workers vying for the same shift. Overriding corporate policy and business interests would put me on that shift. But they're going with a married guy because he has a kid. That's all I can give you for the circumstances. Judge away.
My judgement is that they're choosing someone based on social standing. I think they'd classify that as 'human capital' in this article.
It's kinda hard to. What are you doing on that time? Caring for your elderly and sick grandmother? Tutoring orphans? It's kinda hard to come up with a legitimate reason that is better than that guy spending time with his kids.
"Spending time with" being shorthand here for performing quality parenting that over time makes their kids grow up to be well-adjusted, valued members of society. What could a single, childless person possibly do with that schedule that is more important than improving the future of a dependent that has more life ahead of them than you or I?
No, you don't have to provide an answer if you choose not to. But don't expect us to take you on your word either.
Beyond that, importance is different to everyone. To the company it isn't just your reasons, it is also if they give you the better shift they look anti-family. So they are not only risking you or the other guy quitting, they are also risking dozens of other people deciding this isn't a company they want to work for.
Businesses aren't families, employees shouldn't be discriminated against because another employee needs/wants help.
OR, as the article states, it has nothing to do with marriage and the married person is better at their job and gets to push their weight around more where scheduling is concerned.
Explain why not?
Bear in mind that if the tables were turned, the other guy would be going all over the internet saying "My employer gave this shift to another guy because they hate children and discriminate against families with kids", and the same responses would be had in the opposite direction.
Making these choices is always going to alienate someone, but they're a fact of life.
It may be unfair, but if the person who is making this decision has children, they likely view spending time with children as the most compelling reason.
(That's the idea anyway. Whether it's actually true I cannot say. There are so many confounding variables and pretty much no conclusion can be drawn from one example.)
This is one of the shittiest attitudes I've seen on HN in a while.
Having a child is not in itself something that qualifies as a greater contribution to the species than anything anyone without children can make.
Honestly this is the weirdest kind of child-worship.
But I do not think that these matters should be handled on the employer/employee level.
It will exist solely to assuage the preconceived notions of child-worshiping cretins in management who like to give people preferential treatment based on something that's none of their damn business in the first place.
So you're welcome.
> Take up arms to defend your country?
I'll let you know after your girls serve a tour of active combat duty in an infantry platoon.
My imaginary kid won't contribute tens of thousands of
CO2 to the emissions either.
Some people just don't want to produce offspring or commit to a traditional marriage for a number of different reasons, some of these even include focusing on work/business. Why should these people "earn" less than people who went with the cookie cutter nuclear family approach?
In previous jobs, child care hours accommodation also included a political / PR aspect: they didn't want to deal with the shit storm of spouses going to the press or contacting senior leadership / powerful stakeholders with complaints about time spent away from children.
A more interesting question to me is this: Those hours would allow me to have a more socially adjusted life. I would have more opportunities to meet women with similar views and personalities to my own (outside of work). I would have more time to date during traditional hours, for instance. So which should it be? Should society always optimize for the families that exist or should it optimize (in circumstances left for debate elsewhere) at least some of the time toward the possibility of new families? I'm talking the difference between pure strategies and mixed strategies. Usually mixed strategies work out best for everyone involved over repeated games - and this is definitely a repeated game situation.
Since it isn't, I suspect there's opportunity for you to change jobs or roles to trade off for the comparative advantages you have in your current role (maybe you have lots of opportunity to learn or have a pay premium).
I suspect that your situation is temporary, and once you have accomplished the short-term objectives you have in mind, you'll take advantage of a better opportunity.
The 'human capital' name refers to real increase in production, on this case, probably because people tolerate higher hours and shitter jobs and 'ability bias' because of higher competence people self-selecting into marriage.
It seems to me that the biggest factor in earnings is how hard you work. Nothing quite as motivating as needing to support your family... Married men earn more because they have to.
There is definitely a secondary effect I have seen though, it seems like having kids can boost your salary independent of ability/productivity due to the boss believing your are justified in asking for more money. Pay is set more based on what your boss thinks you need than what you are worth.
And being married certainly isn't a signal of being more productive, if anything the opposite.
I think the OP is assuming far more rationality in wage-setting than actually exists.
A single man in his 20s or 30s will be way more productive than the married man with the same experience. But the married man will be paid more "because he has a family to support."
A single man in his 20s is a slacker. He works hard enough to not get fired, and not much past that. A married man of the same age works hard enough to try to get promoted so he gets paid more. Which is going to be more productive? (Yeah, I know, you say the married man has a lot more distractions - but the single guy is hitting Tinder every minute his boss's back is turned. That single guy is less distracted? I doubt it's an unambiguous win.)
I think people confound competency into the so-called "marriage penalty" and think along the lines of "more competent workers are more suitable mates and therefore more likely to be married".
But I think it's more likely the increased productivity (if there is any, as there are clearly countervailing forces) is a result of being compelled to work harder because there's a family to support.
So it's not at all clear to me that there's some positive signal to employers from being married. Certainly in the end the married guys get paid a lot more though!
My wife having good family health insurance has allowed me to be more aggressive about opportunities.
I know other people who own a business and their wife works at low paying government jobs with good benefits.
If you get married, and find yourself supporting a spouse, and potentially, children, you have new motivation to make more money.
Older men are more likely to be married (since finding a partner takes a variable amount of time, and the marriage rate is higher than the divorce rate). And salaries also tend to go up over time as employees build their careers.
This would of course be part of the author's "Explanation #1: Ability bias.". I'm just surprised that this sub-explanation isn't explicitly called out.
-- not married by the way, just my observations with GFs
Also a dude and I agree. I wonder if there's a gender difference on this point, at least as far as impact on job performance.
I think it makes sense from a conpany perspective, because having kids (and a marriage) seems to make people much more risk-averse, so they're more likely to stay at the nice, stable company.
Which is helpful for the company when attrition is one of your big problems.
I wonder how he would comment this study...
- higher IQ men are more likely to get married (because a higher IQ gives them an advantage hence they are more desirable to women), and higher IQ men earn more
- married men have more pressure to dedicate their time and effort to provide for their family, hence they end up earning more
- married men have more pressure and make different career choices to better provide for their family
- this is a small leftover from a past, more conservative, more family oriented society (before women entered the workforce) which valued married men more (because more useful to society)
There are several potentially correlated variables (College grad and cognitive ability?). That's not necessarily a problem but I think it would necessitate showing different models, not just one.
It's also atheoretical - it's not advisable just to slap a model together and find regression coefficients with high t-stats. In economics, it's important to start with a believable hypothesis grounded in reasonable theory.
This study is like a half-hearted attempt at exploratory data analysis - half-hearted because only the results of one model are shown and there are no charts or graphs to give a feel for the data.
You really can't just jump to a conversation about causes unless you've done more work on the data (maybe Caplan did, but he really needs to show it to stimulate the conversation he wants to have).
One way to test that might be to follow a group of unmarried men who are all the same age, and then 10 years later and compare the still unmarried with the long-time married (5+ years).
I wonder if our educational system will ever reach the point where the layperson doesn't immediately think "I should get married to increase my income".
Tho many people seem to believe that moving to the Bay Area will increase their earnings... post hoc ergo propter hoc.
"Let's promote home ownership..."
For people paying a % of income in child support/alimony, the incentive to make more money is often missing or inverted.
That could explain some unanswered questions in this article. I.E. If a married men is working more time than an unmarried one, that would be a good indication that a married men felt more pressured to work more after getting married and that was where this premium was mostly coming from.
1. The man may be more likely to acquiesce to the wedding if they have a stable income and can support a family.
2. The interested parties on the bride's side may be more interested in pursuing a shotgun wedding if the man has a stable income.
3. The same reasons that lead women to pursue marriage with high-income men may also lead them to pursue pre-marital unprotected sex with those men.
I'm sure you can think of more. This seems like a very suspect way to segment a population.
Men are selected / promoted / rewarded based on reliability, women on desirability.
By reliability, I don't mean something mechanical such as defects per million, but closer in meaning to political reliability -- the tendency to adhere to norms and expectations.
By desirability, I don't mean attractiveness, though that might form the largest component, but also availability (would she like me if our situation were a little different?)
Higher value men are more likely to get married (He's a "good catch")
2. Having a housewife leaves the man with more free time to work.
See, no need to make a study.
That's hypothesis 2 of the three that they looked at, that marriage "makes a man a more productive worker".
There is a need for a study. What if employers are simply assuming that married men are better workers (hypothesis 3), but married men aren't actually better workers? Than as an unmarried man, I'm getting discriminated against, and marital status is a protected class. This is good shit to look at.
A productive man is more likely to get married (He's a good catch)
It's a selection bias on the part of the woman (or man, not that there's anything wrong with that)
3. Employers assume married men, especially if they have children, are hard workers and responsible
But, can you see why it'd be good to study this? Which one of the three is it? Or if it a mix, and what is the mix?
Remember: liberals are the one who are for paid family leave, which today's "family values" conservatives are against (except for themselves). [1]
"Speaker of the House Paul Ryan drew scrutiny this fall when he said, “I cannot and will not give up my family time” as a condition of his speaker candidacy. Ryan, who is a devout Catholic, has opposed family leave measures proposed over the past several years. A spokeswoman for Ryan declined to share the office’s policy on family leave for its congressional employees." [2]
[1] http://abetterminnesota.org/2016/05/conservatives-rally-agai...
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2015/11...
cm2187: Can you provide some actual proof that liberals believe that anyone who thinks or suggests otherwise than what you're dramatically parodying should be silenced? Or are you just being as hysterical as you accuse liberals of being?
This thinking only looks outrageaous if you replace "gender" by "married man".
And yes, it's possible to believe that that lens has value while simultaneously recognizing that some people use it like a weapon to bludgeon anyone who doesn't conform to the party line. Maybe you think the first comment is in poor taste, but I encourage you to soberly consider: is cm2187 a chauvinist pig at war with equality, or is he a disinterested humorist pointing out an absurdity?
This is the same thing as telling the job interviewer that weekends are off-limits. Ryan is negotiating for himself, not using the government to enforce the policy on an employer who is otherwise unwilling. That is 100% consistent with his political position. He is not in favor of making family leave illegal, he just opposes making it mandatory.
There's a difference between believing something should be guaranteed by law and negotiating that same thing as a perk of your employment package.
Asking for proof is not silencing, even if you decide on your own to go silent after I asked for proof. Your silence on the topic of proof speaks loudly.