Thinking Ahead Could Be Holding Women Back
Different attitudes in how men and women prepare for their futures might be a factor contributing to the gender gap, a new study published in Gender & Society finds.
In imagining their work paths, women were disproportionately more likely to think and worry about parenthood than men. And in anticipation of the responsibilities and challenges that parenthood brings, women were more likely than men to downscale or alter their career goals.
Brooke Conroy Bass, who wrote the article, conducted in-depth interviews with 30 heterosexual couples between 25 and 34 who have not (yet) had children.
Related: Millennial Women Are Taking Charge – at Home and at Work
Preparing for the future has emotional and behavioral consequences for women that men don’t suffer as much from, she found. Because of these “gendered anticipations of parenthood,” the inequality in the market starts much earlier than we tend to think.
Bass told Futurity that career trajectories among men and women shift as parenthood approaches, with men investing more effort in their jobs and women dialing back.
The study suggests that part of the problem contributing to the gender wage gap, penalization for maternity leave and the difficulty of making it to the top is anticipating the future.
But should women be penalized for displaying foresight, a characteristic that employers usually value?
Coming Soon: Deductible Relief Day!
You may be familiar with the concept of Tax Freedom Day – the date on which you have earned enough to pay all of your taxes for the year. Focusing on a different kind of financial burden, analysts at the Kaiser Family Foundation have created Deductible Relief Day – the date on which people in employer-sponsored insurance plans have spent enough on health care to meet the average annual deductible.
Average deductibles have more than tripled over the last decade, forcing people to spend more out of pocket each year. As a result, Deductible Relief Day is “getting later and later in the year,” Kaiser’s Larry Levitt said in a tweet Thursday.
Chart of the Day: Families Still Struggling
Ten years into what will soon be the longest economic expansion in U.S. history, 40% of families say they are still struggling, according to a new report from the Urban Institute. “Nearly 4 in 10 nonelderly adults reported that in 2018, their families experienced material hardship—defined as trouble paying or being unable to pay for housing, utilities, food, or medical care at some point during the year—which was not significantly different from the share reporting these difficulties for the previous year,” the report says. “Among adults in families with incomes below twice the federal poverty level (FPL), over 60 percent reported at least one type of material hardship in 2018.”
Chart of the Day: Pragmatism on a Public Option
A recent Morning Consult poll 3,073 U.S. adults who say they support Medicare for All shows that they are just as likely to back a public option that would allow Americans to buy into Medicare or Medicaid without eliminating private health insurance. “The data suggests that, in spite of the fervor for expanding health coverage, a majority of Medicare for All supporters, like all Americans, are leaning into their pragmatism in response to the current political climate — one which has left many skeptical that Capitol Hill can jolt into action on an ambitious proposal like Medicare for All quickly enough to wrangle the soaring costs of health care,” Morning Consult said.
Chart of the Day: The Explosive Growth of the EITC
The Earned Income Tax Credit, a refundable tax credit for low- to moderate-income workers, was established in 1975, with nominal claims of about $1.2 billion ($5.6 billion in 2016 dollars) in its first year. According to the Tax Policy Center, by 2016 “the total was $66.7 billion, almost 12 times larger in real terms.”
Chart of the Day: The Big Picture on Health Care Costs
“The health care services that rack up the highest out-of-pocket costs for patients aren't the same ones that cost the most to the health care system overall,” says Axios’s Caitlin Owens. That may distort our view of how the system works and how best to fix it. For example, Americans spend more out-of-pocket on dental services ($53 billion) than they do on hospital care ($34 billion), but the latter is a much larger part of national health care spending as a whole.
