The 5 Best and Worst States for Working Moms Oregon tops the list, while Louisiana sits at the bottom, according to this latest survey that looks beyond gender pay gaps. NY ranks #5
The Radical Movement To Close The Gender Wage Gap That You’ve Never Heard Of The New York State Fair Pay Act has been passed by the state Assembly in all but one year since 2002, according to Beverly Neufeld, director of the Equal Pay Coalition. The bill is “half comparable worth and half wage transparency protections,” she said. But it always gets stuck in the Senate, failing to get out of committee.
Transparency as a Way to Beat the Pay Gap As women continue to earn less money than men, one solution might be to put salaries out in the open.
But as America continues to grapple with gender discrimination, how else can organizations shrink the wage gap? Some say the answer is clear — literally.
Transparency could be a key to solving the issue, Hegewisch said. Although higher-profile positions, such as CEOs for major corporations, have publicized incomes, many other high-paid positions aren’t as transparent. Social convention makes it inappropriate and uncomfortable to talk about pay, but allowing employees to examine what each position makes brings the issue front and center.
Across the Atlantic, earnings transparency has already had its effects. Norway saw its gender gap shrink after disclosing its citizens’ tax returns online. It’s now ranked third for smallest wage disparity in the World Economic Forum’s 2013 Gender Gap Report – a list where the U.S. comes in at No. 23, one place lower than it was the year before.
The Significance of the Minimum Wage for Women and Families The typical worker earning the minimum wage is not a teenager and is not male. She is an adult woman. Adult women are the single biggest demographic group among minimum wage workers, far outnumbering teenagers of both genders and men of all ages.
Less than half of all workers are women, but they account for 75 percent of workers in the 10 lowest-paid occupations and about 60 percent of minimum wage workers. And most women earning the minimum wage are not teenagers, or wives who can rely on a spouse’s income.
About three-quarters of female minimum wage workers are above the age of 20, and about three-quarters of these women are on their own. Many, of course, are working and taking care of children.
Working families headed by women make up 22 percent of all working families but 39 percent of low-income working families. There are 7.1 million working families with children headed by women, and 58 percent of them are low-income. Sixty-five percent of the children in female-headed working families are low-income. One of every three families that are headed by a woman with no husband present lives in poverty, and about 48 percent of all children in single-parent households headed by women live in poverty. A woman working full time at the current minimum wage earns less than $14,500 annually – more than $4,000 below the poverty line for a mother with two children.
According to a recent study, around 30 cents of every dollar of taxpayer-funded earned income tax credit benefit goes to employers. The minimum wage mitigates this “leakage” effect by limiting the wage reductions that result from an increase in the labor supply.
A Better Minimum Wage for Mother’s Day One of the scandals of this country is that a woman in this position can work at the minimum wage, now $7.25 an hour federally, full time every week for a year and still be poor. The poverty line for a two-person household is $15,730 per year; how a woman and a child could or should live on that is something of a mystery. Some cities and states have set it higher, largely because the people in them see the current numbers as a cruel economic joke.
Study Finds Lifetime Wage Gain From College Degree While it is fashionable in some circles to question whether students gain economically from a four-year college degree, new data released Monday by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco suggest that the benefits are significant. Counting both the average costs of going to college and lost wages from time enrolled, the study estimates that the lifetime earnings premium for a four-year degree is more than $800,000. Further, most people with a degree recoup the costs of their education by age 40.
Elizabeth Warren Proposes Bill to Tax the Rich and Reduce Student Loan Burden U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is introducing legislation in the Senate on Tuesday that tackles two of her policy priorities – college debt and the tax rate paid by the wealthy. “There are more than 40 million people currently dealing with student loan debt. When their interest rates are cut, many will save hundreds of dollars a month and many more will save thousands of dollars a month,” Warren said. “That’s money they can use to build an economic future and to strengthen the economy.”
Confidence gap still present among collegiate women UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) conducts an annual survey asking incoming college freshman to self-rate their abilities compared to the average person their age. Linda Sax, UCLA higher education professor, says this survey showcases some long-standing trends.
“In the over 40 years that we’ve been measuring student’s self ratings, women tend to consistently rate themselves lower than men do on a wide range of self-ratings, she says.
Anheuser-Busch Executive Says She Was Underpaid Millions Because Of Her Gender In a trial that began last week, Francine Katz, who worked for Anheuser-Busch for 20 years and was formerly the highest ranking female executive, accused the company of underpaying her by millions and excluding her from important functions because of her gender.
Even the highest paid female executives experience a pay gap, making 18 percent less than their male peers. Yahoo’s female CEO Marissa Mayer is currently making less than a man who worked under her and was fired by the company, while General Motors’s CEO Mary Barra will make less than half of what her male predecessor made this year.
Fast-food workers look to heat up wage debate by striking in 150 U.S. cities Fast-food workers will take their call for higher wages back to the streets. Advocacy groups and fast-food employees are planning to strike 150 U.S. cities and in 33 other countries on May 15 in their bid to generate international support for higher wages. Among the organizations behind the effort is the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering workers.
America’s Essentials Are Getting More Expensive While Its Toys Are Getting Cheap Jordan Weissmann nails it: “Prices are rising on the very things that are essential for climbing out of poverty.” The road to upward mobility is uncertain, but we know the checkpoints. Graduating from college—whose sticker price is actually rising faster than its actual cost—correlates with higher employment and richer earnings. Chronically sick children affect parents’ mental health, and chronically sick parents hurt a family’s well-being. Single moms and dads who can’t afford daycare and wind up spending lots of hours watching after their kids have trouble finishing school or establishing themselves in the workforce. Just as the benefits of wealth create a virtuous cycle of behavior, the challenges of poverty start a vicious circle that continues to spin down through multiple generations.
Grads with more debt are less happy Student loan debt isn’t just hurting college grads financially, it’s also having a negative impact on their overall well-being. College graduates without any student loan debt were seven times more likely to be happy and thriving in most areas of their lives compared to those with more than $40,000 in debt, according to a Gallup-Purdue University study
Graying of America Is Speeding, Report Says The number of Americans 65 and older is expected to nearly double by the middle of the century when they will make up more than a fifth of the nation’s population, according to a Census Bureau report released Tuesday.
By 2050, 83.7 million Americans will be 65 or older, compared with 43.1 million in 2012, the report said. Fewer than 10 percent were older than 65 in 1970.
Australia: Give me my 5k It’s 2014. Male university grads are still being paid more than females. What gives?
The sad, shocking truth is that in 2014, in Australia, female university graduates can expect to earn on average $5000 less than their male counterparts*. If that made your mind boggle, then consider this: when the stats are broken down by industry, it’s even more depressing. Male dentistry graduates earned $14,000 more than females, while architecture and building grads took home $9000 more if they had a penis. Plus, while the median male graduate salary increased by $3000 between 2011 and 2012, the median salary for women remained the same. What the hell is going on?