The Pay Gap Is a Parenting Gap

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There's not much difference between men and women as they track through their twenties. Then around the early thirties, the women's line just plummets,. And so it doesn't tak much investigation to figure out what's going on there. Becoming a father has very little effect on men's earnings. In fact, if anything, might bump it a little bit. Men who are fathers take on more overtime, for example. But it has this dramatic downward effect on on women. The single biggest reason now for the gender pay gap is these differences in the division of labour in terms of raising children. Once the drivers become mums, they do less overtime, they choose less

Shermer and Reeves discuss: • comparison method: U.S. vs. other WERID countries • education • work/labor market • family • marriage • Divorce/custody/spousal support/child support • intersectionality I: Black boys and men vs. White boys and men • intersectionality II: poor boys and men vs. middle class/upper class boys and men • What is a man? (nature and nurture in the making of a male) • what the political left gets wrong about boys and men • what the political right gets wrong about boys and men • solutions: red shirt boys early; men in STEM and HEAL • fatherhood as an independent institution

Richard V. Reeves is a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, where he directs the Boys and Men Project and holds the John C. and Nancy D. Whitehead Chair. He is the author of Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That Is a Problem, and What to Do About It(2017) and a regular contributor to the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and The Atlantic.