Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Mark Perry versus Joe Biden on Equal Pay for Women

Joe Biden babbling with no detailed examination of the facts:

Mark Perry and Andrew Biggs in WSJ with the facts:
The '77 Cents on the Dollar' Myth About Women's Pay
Once education, marital status and occupations are considered, the 'gender wage gap' all but disappears.

April 8 is "Equal Pay Day," an annual event to raise awareness regarding the so-called gender wage gap. As President Obama said in the State of the Union address, women "still make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns," a claim echoed by the National Committee on Pay Equity, the American Association of University Women and other progressive groups.

The 23% gap implies that women work an extra 68 days to earn the same pay as a man. Mr. Obama advocates allowing women to sue for wage discrimination, with employers bearing the burden of proving they did not discriminate. But the numbers bandied about to make the claim of widespread discrimination are fundamentally misleading and economically illogical.

In its annual report, "Highlights of Women's Earnings in 2012," the Bureau of Labor Statistics states that "In 2012, women who were full-time wage and salary workers had median usual weekly earnings of $691. On average in 2012, women made about 81% of the median earnings of male full-time wage and salary workers ($854)." Give or take a few percentage points, the BLS appears to support the president's claim.

But every "full-time" worker, as the BLS notes, is not the same: Men were almost twice as likely as women to work more than 40 hours a week, and women almost twice as likely to work only 35 to 39 hours per week. Once that is taken into consideration, the pay gap begins to shrink. Women who worked a 40-hour week earned 88% of male earnings.

Then there is the issue of marriage and children

Read the rest here.

5 comments:

  1. wailing about the gender gap is just something democrats have to do, like catholics crossing themselves.

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  2. Ceteris paribus. A phrase everyone who babbles about some group difference needs to understand, but almost certainly does not.

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  3. Mark Perry was on the Tom Woods show today...The 'Equal Pay Day' Scam

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  4. Another circular argument where the writer assumes the employer is acting rationally. Discrimination is irrational behavior so if you assume rational behavior you are assuming no discrimination.

    "These gender-disparity claims are also economically illogical. If women were paid 77 cents on the dollar, a profit-oriented firm could dramatically cut labor costs by replacing male employees with females"

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