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Comment by larnmar | Hacker News Reader

Women in that age group probably have a higher fraction of “hobby workers” than any other demographic group —- people who don’t really need to work (since they’re already wealthy enough and their husbands earn far more anyway) but choose to work a few hours a week just for something to do.

If times are good and families are wealthy, the number of hobbyist workers in the older female age group increases. If times are bad, these women might be forced to work more hours or even full time in order to make ends meet.

It makes sense that their LIUR is flat compared to other groups.

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Your hypothesis is interesting but it doesn’t fit the data. The flattened trend for this age group began suddenly during the Great Recession of 2008.

I think it’s more likely that a lot of women in this age group suddenly lost their jobs in the Great Recession and never recovered.

This is more likely, especially when considering that women, like minorities, are likelier to be the first to be laid off as a recession gets underway, and the last to find full-time, full-skill employment after it ends.

Sounds like you're just speculating... anyone who understands the data knows this isn't true.

The Great Recession disproportionately hit men, particularly blue collar men. Just look up the Great Mancession or look at this chart https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2009/07/its-not...

I appreciate your thorough erasure of race from the subject.

https://www.sociologicalscience.com/articles-vol1-12-159/

https://iwpr.org/publications/black-hispanic-women-lag-recov...

https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2011/08/02/comparing-b...

I think a more recent source than in the middle of The Great Recession itself might be more illuminating.

Considering that the sources you cite and the source your debate openent cites disagree on the facts on the ground, y'all have some work to do if you ever want to understand eachother.

The source cited by your opponent claims that 80% of job losses in the recession were for men's jobs. If you analyze your sources, they disagree with this claim. Respond to that if you care to make any progress.

I did. I welcomed him to find a source from later.

The category is only six years wide. The oldest people in it entered the category in 2013; none of them were of age in 2008. Your thesis only makes sense if you state that the Great Recession induced/exacerbated employer discrimination against this particular group of people.

It doesn’t say that at all. Different demographics are not employed equally across all sectors of the economy. In all likelihood, women of this age group were employed in precarious positions which crumbled during the recession. Due to their age, retraining might not have been a viable option, so they stayed home. None of this requires discrimination at all.

Exactly. What else started collapsing in that period?

A: Retail

That’s one way to look at it. Usually the answer is simpler, this is where you have divorced and widowed women who need additional work to survive and pay for healthcare until social security and Medicare kicks in.

When I worked in a social services agency in the early 2000s, this was one of the growth demographics for food stamps and Medicaid enrollment.

Aren't those husband also hobby workers by same measure? They don't have to work strictly speaking and definitely could work less and still survive. But they choose to work more, because they derive self-satisfaction from it. If times are bad, these men might be forced to work more to make ends meet.

As a corollary, they are likely spending a lot of their free time as unpaid babysitters for relatives and their own children.

This is typically the age when women become grandmothers, and, unless they were highly paid in their professional life, the babysitting will typically be more valuable too.

This range is also Special in another way, because 401k and IRAs don't kick in until exactly 59.5 years, at which the LIUR of this cohort likely drops dramatically and may account for muddying up the data or not adhering to the trend.

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