Unclear on the concept
I’m not making this up:
Married men earn more than bachelors so long as their wives stay at home doing the housework, according to a report Wednesday from Britain’s Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER).
Academics Elena Bardasi and Mark Taylor found that a married man whose wife does not go out to work but is primarily responsible for the cooking and cleaning earns about 3 percent more than comparably employed single men.
But that wage premium disappears if wives go out to work themselves or don’t do most of the housework.
“It has been fairly well documented that married men earn more than single men,” Taylor, a labor economist, told Reuters.
Cause and effect seems to be confused here. I’d dare say that married men are older than most bachelors and, given their experience in their fields, would obviously make more. Also, I’d say it’s more appropriate to state that Wives tend to stay home if the husband tends to make more money as opposed to intimating that stay at home wives cause husbands to make more money.
Stupid social science.
June 23rd, 2005 at 9:04 am
Correlation does not imply causation, correlation does not imply causation, correlation does not imply causation, correlation does not imply causation…
Repeat until you are at peace.
June 23rd, 2005 at 9:37 am
Funny thing is that married guys are broke all the time, because that wife that is sitting home “doing housework” is also out shopping and spending all their money.
I’ll take the 3% cut, thank you very much.
June 23rd, 2005 at 10:38 am
I remember overhearing someone float the theory that hats cause hair loss. Her resoning was that most of the bald men she saw wore hats. I almost fell out of my chair laughing!
June 23rd, 2005 at 12:40 pm
I’ve not looked at this study, but I would point out the following:
A good study should take experience, age, education, etc. into account when comparing salaries and use them as control factors. Its not to say that the study was or was not done properly, but a 3% difference might suggest that these things were controlled for.
I agree with the woman staying home bit though.