Comment by erikpukinskis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by erikpukinskis | Hacker News Reader

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"Interesting fact: in the U.S., single, childless, women under age 30 in urban areas earn more (10-20% in cities like New York) than single, childless, men under age 30."

For anyone reading along who is checking facts:

* The number from the "report" is actually 8%, not 10-20%.

* This is not a peer reviewed finding, it is a report by a company called Reach Advisors.

* The report, according to Time, says that in 147 of the 150 largest cities in the U.S the median income is 8% higher for women. That might mean that the differential is lower than 8% in those other 3 cities, or it might mean they filtered out 3 outlier cities, we don't know.

* That's 70 million people, about 22% of the population (I added up the numbers here: http://www.citymayors.com/gratis/uscities_100.html)

* Women age 20-30 comprise about a quarter of the working age women in this country (20-60) ballparked from here: http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-03.pdf

* So when people say "young women in urban areas" we're talking about maybe 5-10% of women.

* And the numbers also only apply to childless women, but I have no way to find out what the child-having rates are amongst 20-something women in those cities. Looking at this map, I'd expect a strong majority of those women to be childless: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5419a5.htm Regardless, any effect of discrimination-based-on-pregnancy-history would be hidden in this population.

* The report in question does not appear to control for educational experience, jobs, etc. So for all we know there are simply more college-educated women in cities than college educated men.

> * The number from the "report" is actually 8%, not 10-20%.

8% is the average for the 147 cities studied. The number was 17% for New York ("But the new study suggests that the gap is bigger than previously thought, with young women in New York City, Los Angeles and San Diego making 17%, 12% and 15% more than their male peers, respectively.")

> So when people say "young women in urban areas" we're talking about maybe 5-10% of women.

Right. I noted the qualifiers up front ("single, childless, under 30, in urban areas.") The intent was to look at a sub-set of the population where women do earn more and analyze the implications of the characteristics of the subset to the whole population. Specifically, young single women in cities out-earn men, but their earning power erodes as they get older. That's a very relevant and telling observation.

> Specifically, young single women in cities out-earn men, but their earning power erodes as they get older.

Not necessarily -- you're comparing two different generations. These young women may well continue to out-earn men as they get older.

If you read the full report, and you compare by race men still make more. Childless white men make more than childless white women. Childless Hispanic men make more than childless Hispanic women. Childless black men and women make about the same. White women make more than Hispanic men.

Due to a larger ratio of white women : minority women compared to white men : minority women, it skews the "Women's earnings" up.

There are many reasons why various groups make 'more' or 'less' but it is kinda disingenuous what people try to 'prove' with this report.

An example of Simpson's Paradox[0] (N.B. not really a paradox).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson's_paradox

Thanks for linking to that. The interesting thing about that paradox is that it makes be doubt the wage gap even more because it is generally given as the most general "women on average". Knowing that the entire sample set could have the opposite leader than the individuals groups of samples, it is entirely possible that a lot of job type have a fairly balanced pay structure (and some jobs even in favor of women) but when lumped all together there is a gap in favor of men.

I don't see why you care what 6 year olds or retired women make, rendering your 5-10% meaningless. So really ~25% of women make more than there male counterparts.

No, there are roughly 20 million women age 20-30 and rougly 60 million aged 30-60, so ~25% of working women are under 30.

That's exactly what he just said.

Yes, nobody ever talks about the fact that 6-year-old women make just as much on average as 6-year-old men.

The part about not controlling for educational experience is probably a pretty critical flaw considering the fact that women outnumber men in colleges. Of course that is itself a tricky problem since men and women tend to choose different majors (for a whole host of reasons, I'm sure, some undesirable and some benign), but just leaving it out of a study is irresponsible.

So when people say "young women in urban areas" we're talking about maybe 5-10% of women.

In the midst of all that fact-checking and debunking, you throw out this wholly unsupported and claim with an invented number?

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