Welcome to today's blog post, where we examine provocative questions through the lens of dubious statistics.
A friend recently sent me an article from the Economist about declining marriage rates in Asia. (There's a bigger piece, from the same magazine, here.) The Economist takes the view that increasing economic emancipation for women means that fewer of them "choose" marriage. Instead of blaming these career women for dragging down family values and fertility rates, perhaps we should laud them for building up the economy.
Specifically, what if the Economist has the causal relationship wrong? Social trends, famously, take ten years to become visible in census data. That means that the increasing economic autonomy of Asian women doesn't coincide with recent high economic growth - it predates it. In fact, it is probably one of the primary causes.
What makes me think this? Across the globe, women are the world's most squandered economic resource. In the United States, women's labor force participation rate is 58%, while men's is 72%. According to UN Women, "if women’s paid employment rates were raised to the same level as men’s, America’s GDP would be 9 percent higher." Nor is America the only country where this is true: "the euro-zone’s [GDP] would be 13 percent higher, and Japan’s would be boosted by 16 percent."
Women in the labor force: the new service economy requires female employees
In India, the labor force participation rate among men is 81%, whereas for women it is 33% (statistics from same sites as above - World Bank labor force data.) India has surplus labor, which means employers have no reason to hire women - except that women are better, smarter workers. In India, the proportion of girls to boys in primary and secondary education is 92:100, but that number is on an upward trend. In China, there are 105 girls in early schooling for every 100 boys, also on an upward trend. As for being better workers, women perform 66% of the world's work, and produce 50% of the world's food. In some nations, that second percentage is as high as 90%.
But why preach to the choir? Indian employers are fast cottoning on to the benefits of hiring women. The BPO (business process outsourcing, ie, call center) industry was one of the primary catalysts for transforming India from a stultifying agrarian economy to a dynamic, services-driven one. India's services exports were estimated at $57 billion in February 2010, and are projected to reach $59 billion this year, giving India 55% of the world's outsourcing market (ie, it is the majority player). Services exports have rapidly overtaken merchandise exports as India's leading export product.
And what powered the BPO revolution in India? Employers' increasing willingness to hire women, as well as parents' increasing willingness to permit girls to work. Approximately 38% of BPO employees are women, but 40% of new hires in the industry today are female, which means hiring women is on the rise. (Nor is the trend limited to India: in the Philippines, nearly 60% of BPO workers are women, although these women consistently earn less than men for the same work.)
But traditional Indian families frown on women working outside the home
Despite the economic necessity, Indian family structure discourages women from working outside the home. A study of BPO workers in Gurgaon - Gurgaon is arguably India's outsourcing hub - found that the parents of young female workers were more likely than parents of young male workers to be strict about what their children wore or what hour they came home.
The study also found the following:
"Young women were, however, significantly more likely than young men to report the perception of parental disapproval in reference to most themes. For example, 17 percent of young women as compared to 9 percent of young men reported expecting parental disapproval if they were friendly with an opposite-sex colleague, and 37 percent of young women as compared to 12 percent of young men reported their parents would
disapprove of them having a boyfriend/girlfriend."
Interestingly, the study found that girls - who were more likely to live at home before starting work - were just as likely as men to be living independent after they started work (suggesting that young women used their salary to get the hell out of Dodge, and who can blame them? But before you heap condemnation upon them, consider this other impressive result: 40.8% of young women regularly sent money back home to parents, versus 16.8% of men. So much for a son preference.)
The study also found that women working in call centers were significantly more likely to go out partying, have friends of the opposite sex, or have friends at all. (For men, these differences were not significant.) After taking up a job in a BPO, women were more likely than men to report that they felt more confident, more assertive, more responsible, more independent, more outgoing and better able to resolve problems.
Women living alone were also more likely than those living with family to report having a boyfriend or being sexually involved with someone. (For more insights into how BPOs have changed the professional prospects and life expectations of young women, read Monisha Vaid's entire survey, link above)
It's not surprising that women wouldn't want to give up this kind of freedom. What's more surprising is that they are still expected to. Professional autonomy isn't the best way for young Indian women to achieve independence, it is the only way. If the pressures exerted by parents in Indian society are intense, the pressures and strictures imposed by in-laws are even more draconian. Nor are these strictures always escapable: today, 20% of Indians live in joint (extended) families, where rights and freedoms are limited.
"Among adults in a joint family, a newly arrived daughter-in-law has the least authority. Males learn to command others within the household but expect to accept the direction of senior males...Women are especially strongly socialized to accept a position subservient to males, to control their sexual impulses, and to subordinate their personal preferences to the needs of the family and kin group."
Of course, the joint family has become all but obsolete in the urban context, so perhaps this isn't the best comparison group for those young call center employees. But many nuclear families, according to Singh (author of UN report above) are "offshoots" of joint families, where social pressures on women are reduced but still severe. Until recently, it was unheard of for women to continue to work after marriage. It wasn't until 2005 that Hindu women married in India were granted the same status as men when it came to inheriting their parents' property (Hindu Succession Amendment Act, 2005).
In other words, for individual Indian women who had the capacity to earn, marriage meant the loss of freedom and financial agency.
Marriage by the wayside: the situation in developed countries
Obviously, traditional Indian marriage systems discourage women from working, and are therefore bad for the economy. So liberalization should help matters, shouldn't it? Why not create an inclusive state that grants women equal rights and childcare? Then women should want to get married, right?
Wrong!
Let's examine two countries on the opposite ends of the spectrum. The United States has no national policy on paid maternity leave, but the Family and Medical Leave Act (which can be applied to pregnancy) provides for 12 paid weeks. Finland, on the other hand, provides three years. The children of Finnish women also get subsidized health care and free access to some of the best schools in the world. All of this should encourage Finns to get married, right? Or at least, in greater numbers than Americans.
Except that's not what happens. The marriage rate in Finland was a little under 6 marriages per 1000 people in 2009, down from a little under 9 per 1000 in 1970. The marriage rate in the United States was about 7.8 in 2009. In 1970, it was nearly 11. (Numbers from OECD report, link above.)
Interestingly, in the United States, marriage is seen as a smart economic decision. Married people whose spouses are present earn $32, 724, whereas never married people earn $19,293. But if we break it down by gender we see that married women with spouses present earn on average $23,759, whereas single women earn $17,660. Married men, meanwhile, significantly outearn their wives: $42,290 is the average, while a single man makes $20,412.
So for American women, marriage provides a slight earnings bump. For men, a significant one. (Source: US Census tables) Finland, by providing such extensive social support for child-rearing, may have actually increased the financial disincentive to marry. In America, women who want to take time off to have children will need money for child support and health insurance. Finnish women are provided for by the state.
Women can't afford not to work
Of course, somebody pays - in Finland's case, the taxpayer. In 2009, total tax revenue in Finland was 43.1% of GDP, whereas in the United States it was 24%. (Of course, the United States is a bigger economy than Finland.) An individual earning the median Finnish income (Euro 41,556) faces a 21.5% tax rate. An American earning the median American income for an unmarried person ($30,940) faces a tax rate of 15%. In other words, Finnish women are in the same situation as American women, in the end: someone has to pay for the services they enjoy, either through taxes or through the private marketplace. (Numbers on total tax revenues and thresholds from OECD tax database, individual figures otherwise noted.) Women in developed countries cannot afford not to work. As health care and education costs rise around the world, women can't even afford to work less than their full ability. Getting married doesn't really help - it increases the tax burden.
Marriage distracts women from working
On to the key question: is marriage bad for the economy? And if so, how? Consider this line, from a course module offered to undergraduates at Penn State: "Women as a group perform 70-80 percent of all household labor. Although women and men both leave the house to earn paid wages, women continue to perform more of the unpaid domestic work at home. Yet, this is not only in the United States. A 1995 United Nations study found that in most developed countries women contribute over 30 hours of housework per week, while men only contribute approximately 10 to 15 hours per week."
In other words, marriage, by its very structure, increases the amount of unpaid labor that women perform, and this is true across the globe and across economies, and even before we take into account the amount of work that goes into child-rearing.
Being married, in other words, takes women's time away from full employment.
This is why marriage is on the wane worldwide
Why is this bad for the world economy? There is a fundamental and structural conflict between the present requirements of the growing world economy (a ready workforce of intelligent, educated workers, which must include women) and the future needs of the world economy (a ready supply of intelligent educated workers, which must be produced by women). Finland has found a way to integrate these two competing needs, but along the way, they've left marriage behind. Will the rest of the world end up doing the same?
A friend recently sent me an article from the Economist about declining marriage rates in Asia. (There's a bigger piece, from the same magazine, here.) The Economist takes the view that increasing economic emancipation for women means that fewer of them "choose" marriage. Instead of blaming these career women for dragging down family values and fertility rates, perhaps we should laud them for building up the economy.
Specifically, what if the Economist has the causal relationship wrong? Social trends, famously, take ten years to become visible in census data. That means that the increasing economic autonomy of Asian women doesn't coincide with recent high economic growth - it predates it. In fact, it is probably one of the primary causes.
What makes me think this? Across the globe, women are the world's most squandered economic resource. In the United States, women's labor force participation rate is 58%, while men's is 72%. According to UN Women, "if women’s paid employment rates were raised to the same level as men’s, America’s GDP would be 9 percent higher." Nor is America the only country where this is true: "the euro-zone’s [GDP] would be 13 percent higher, and Japan’s would be boosted by 16 percent."
Women in the labor force: the new service economy requires female employees
In India, the labor force participation rate among men is 81%, whereas for women it is 33% (statistics from same sites as above - World Bank labor force data.) India has surplus labor, which means employers have no reason to hire women - except that women are better, smarter workers. In India, the proportion of girls to boys in primary and secondary education is 92:100, but that number is on an upward trend. In China, there are 105 girls in early schooling for every 100 boys, also on an upward trend. As for being better workers, women perform 66% of the world's work, and produce 50% of the world's food. In some nations, that second percentage is as high as 90%.
But why preach to the choir? Indian employers are fast cottoning on to the benefits of hiring women. The BPO (business process outsourcing, ie, call center) industry was one of the primary catalysts for transforming India from a stultifying agrarian economy to a dynamic, services-driven one. India's services exports were estimated at $57 billion in February 2010, and are projected to reach $59 billion this year, giving India 55% of the world's outsourcing market (ie, it is the majority player). Services exports have rapidly overtaken merchandise exports as India's leading export product.
And what powered the BPO revolution in India? Employers' increasing willingness to hire women, as well as parents' increasing willingness to permit girls to work. Approximately 38% of BPO employees are women, but 40% of new hires in the industry today are female, which means hiring women is on the rise. (Nor is the trend limited to India: in the Philippines, nearly 60% of BPO workers are women, although these women consistently earn less than men for the same work.)
But traditional Indian families frown on women working outside the home
Despite the economic necessity, Indian family structure discourages women from working outside the home. A study of BPO workers in Gurgaon - Gurgaon is arguably India's outsourcing hub - found that the parents of young female workers were more likely than parents of young male workers to be strict about what their children wore or what hour they came home.
The study also found the following:
"Young women were, however, significantly more likely than young men to report the perception of parental disapproval in reference to most themes. For example, 17 percent of young women as compared to 9 percent of young men reported expecting parental disapproval if they were friendly with an opposite-sex colleague, and 37 percent of young women as compared to 12 percent of young men reported their parents would
disapprove of them having a boyfriend/girlfriend."
Interestingly, the study found that girls - who were more likely to live at home before starting work - were just as likely as men to be living independent after they started work (suggesting that young women used their salary to get the hell out of Dodge, and who can blame them? But before you heap condemnation upon them, consider this other impressive result: 40.8% of young women regularly sent money back home to parents, versus 16.8% of men. So much for a son preference.)
The study also found that women working in call centers were significantly more likely to go out partying, have friends of the opposite sex, or have friends at all. (For men, these differences were not significant.) After taking up a job in a BPO, women were more likely than men to report that they felt more confident, more assertive, more responsible, more independent, more outgoing and better able to resolve problems.
Women living alone were also more likely than those living with family to report having a boyfriend or being sexually involved with someone. (For more insights into how BPOs have changed the professional prospects and life expectations of young women, read Monisha Vaid's entire survey, link above)
It's not surprising that women wouldn't want to give up this kind of freedom. What's more surprising is that they are still expected to. Professional autonomy isn't the best way for young Indian women to achieve independence, it is the only way. If the pressures exerted by parents in Indian society are intense, the pressures and strictures imposed by in-laws are even more draconian. Nor are these strictures always escapable: today, 20% of Indians live in joint (extended) families, where rights and freedoms are limited.
"Among adults in a joint family, a newly arrived daughter-in-law has the least authority. Males learn to command others within the household but expect to accept the direction of senior males...Women are especially strongly socialized to accept a position subservient to males, to control their sexual impulses, and to subordinate their personal preferences to the needs of the family and kin group."
Of course, the joint family has become all but obsolete in the urban context, so perhaps this isn't the best comparison group for those young call center employees. But many nuclear families, according to Singh (author of UN report above) are "offshoots" of joint families, where social pressures on women are reduced but still severe. Until recently, it was unheard of for women to continue to work after marriage. It wasn't until 2005 that Hindu women married in India were granted the same status as men when it came to inheriting their parents' property (Hindu Succession Amendment Act, 2005).
In other words, for individual Indian women who had the capacity to earn, marriage meant the loss of freedom and financial agency.
Marriage by the wayside: the situation in developed countries
Obviously, traditional Indian marriage systems discourage women from working, and are therefore bad for the economy. So liberalization should help matters, shouldn't it? Why not create an inclusive state that grants women equal rights and childcare? Then women should want to get married, right?
Wrong!
Let's examine two countries on the opposite ends of the spectrum. The United States has no national policy on paid maternity leave, but the Family and Medical Leave Act (which can be applied to pregnancy) provides for 12 paid weeks. Finland, on the other hand, provides three years. The children of Finnish women also get subsidized health care and free access to some of the best schools in the world. All of this should encourage Finns to get married, right? Or at least, in greater numbers than Americans.
Except that's not what happens. The marriage rate in Finland was a little under 6 marriages per 1000 people in 2009, down from a little under 9 per 1000 in 1970. The marriage rate in the United States was about 7.8 in 2009. In 1970, it was nearly 11. (Numbers from OECD report, link above.)
Interestingly, in the United States, marriage is seen as a smart economic decision. Married people whose spouses are present earn $32, 724, whereas never married people earn $19,293. But if we break it down by gender we see that married women with spouses present earn on average $23,759, whereas single women earn $17,660. Married men, meanwhile, significantly outearn their wives: $42,290 is the average, while a single man makes $20,412.
So for American women, marriage provides a slight earnings bump. For men, a significant one. (Source: US Census tables) Finland, by providing such extensive social support for child-rearing, may have actually increased the financial disincentive to marry. In America, women who want to take time off to have children will need money for child support and health insurance. Finnish women are provided for by the state.
Women can't afford not to work
Of course, somebody pays - in Finland's case, the taxpayer. In 2009, total tax revenue in Finland was 43.1% of GDP, whereas in the United States it was 24%. (Of course, the United States is a bigger economy than Finland.) An individual earning the median Finnish income (Euro 41,556) faces a 21.5% tax rate. An American earning the median American income for an unmarried person ($30,940) faces a tax rate of 15%. In other words, Finnish women are in the same situation as American women, in the end: someone has to pay for the services they enjoy, either through taxes or through the private marketplace. (Numbers on total tax revenues and thresholds from OECD tax database, individual figures otherwise noted.) Women in developed countries cannot afford not to work. As health care and education costs rise around the world, women can't even afford to work less than their full ability. Getting married doesn't really help - it increases the tax burden.
Marriage distracts women from working
On to the key question: is marriage bad for the economy? And if so, how? Consider this line, from a course module offered to undergraduates at Penn State: "Women as a group perform 70-80 percent of all household labor. Although women and men both leave the house to earn paid wages, women continue to perform more of the unpaid domestic work at home. Yet, this is not only in the United States. A 1995 United Nations study found that in most developed countries women contribute over 30 hours of housework per week, while men only contribute approximately 10 to 15 hours per week."
In other words, marriage, by its very structure, increases the amount of unpaid labor that women perform, and this is true across the globe and across economies, and even before we take into account the amount of work that goes into child-rearing.
Being married, in other words, takes women's time away from full employment.
This is why marriage is on the wane worldwide
Why is this bad for the world economy? There is a fundamental and structural conflict between the present requirements of the growing world economy (a ready workforce of intelligent, educated workers, which must include women) and the future needs of the world economy (a ready supply of intelligent educated workers, which must be produced by women). Finland has found a way to integrate these two competing needs, but along the way, they've left marriage behind. Will the rest of the world end up doing the same?
Very interesting, and relevant, although long for a blog :) Grt to know u've found the time to write a blog.
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