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Where do the kept women go?
Zubin Jelveh reports:
If you're a married woman living in the New York City area, there's a better than 50 percent chance that you don't work, according to a recent analysis of Census data by economists affiliated with the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank.
More specifically, only 49 percent of white high school-educated married women in their prime working ages were holding down jobs in the New York area as of the 2000 Census. To put that in perspective, there are roughly 2 million woman over 15-years-old who are married in the New York area.
The national average for this particular demographic is 67 percent. At the other end of the spectrum is Minneapolis where almost 80 percent of these married women are employed -- that's larger than the percentage of working men aged 25 and older in the U.S.
And why is this?
Surprisingly, the economists argue, the most important specific thing seems to be traffic.
And if you do work in these traffic-heavy areas, you are likely to work more hours. But is it all causal?
With all due respect to The Walker Art Center, if I wanted to be a kept woman I would not start my quest in Minneapolis. High density, as you find in Manhattan, means lots of fun things to do in your copious free time as a kept woman and also a higher degree of income inequality and thus the hope of snaring a rich man. There's a reason why they didn't set Sex in the City in Paramus and most of the women there will be working even when the traffic gets worse.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on May 9, 2008 at 07:04 AM in Economics | Permalink
Comments
Why do you assume that these are all "kept women" with "copious free time" and not just stay-at-home moms?
Posted by: Jacqueline at May 9, 2008 7:51:35 AM
Now you know why there are more single women than men in NYC.
A strong incentive for women to marry, and a strong incentive for men not to.
Posted by: aaron at May 9, 2008 8:00:46 AM
Jacqueline, you think more women in New York than in Minneapolis want to spend all day long staying home with the kids? Not a chance.
Posted by: K. Williams at May 9, 2008 8:02:05 AM
Sad but true. Both teh traffic thing
and sanring a rich guy thing. So
hard to find true love in this world.
tsk, tsk.
Posted by: sa at May 9, 2008 8:15:24 AM
Jacqueline: from Jelveh's blog post -
Child-care costs also don't seem to be a big factor since married women with and without children exhibit the same patterns.
Posted by: Mitch at May 9, 2008 8:28:30 AM
Jacqueline, you think more women in New York than in Minneapolis want to spend all day long staying home with the kids? Not a chance.
I don't think she's assuming anything; I think she's asking a question.
And I'm not sure whether to find it humorous or just sad that the normal arrangement, worldwide and historically speaking, is being disparaged here as "kept women". I'll have to ask my wife what she thinks of being called that simply because she doesn't bring in a paycheck :)
Posted by: holmegm at May 9, 2008 8:52:35 AM
@holmegm
Worldwide and historically speaking, the ability to have an able adult member of the family refrain from marketable work has been a status symbol reserved for the upper middle class.
Posted by: Cyrus at May 9, 2008 9:15:33 AM
Two thoughts: I live in the Twin Cities. The women I meet that are having children move out of Minneapolis and into Saint Paul or other suburbs, where they generally stay home. So this would leave a higher percentage of the working in Minneapolis.
NYC, on the other hand, may not have that mobility issue.
Second, the reason that the percentage of non working women may be higher in SF and NYC might be tax implications and cost of childcare. Those couples who want kids but are not rich enough for the wife not to work may move to other places where they can afford that, or where childcare is cheaper. With one spouse not working and no one paying childcare, plus a mortgage, your taxes are virtually nothing. For those with well off husbands, it may behoove many of those wives to go on strike, so to speak, in an expensive city, rather than lose over 50% of their income to taxes and childcare.
Posted by: mouse at May 9, 2008 9:30:57 AM
Nice conclusion.
Minneapolis has the most working married women. New York has the least. New York is fun. That means Minneapolis sucks.
You're better than that.
Posted by: Jeff at May 9, 2008 9:35:38 AM
We may be in central Chicago vs. Manhattan, and while the "lots of fun things to do" are certainly a reason to be there, the large number of small children aren't leaving my wife with copious free time to the best of my knowledge. Maybe she's just holding out on me. Will start referring to her as my kept woman. Hee.
Can only think of one (straight) married couple of my acquaintance where (in their late 20s) the spouse had neither children nor career nor the intention of having either. Think this may be correlated with both of them coming from modest backgrounds and one achieving rapid wealth, would guess that pattern may be common in such marriages.
Posted by: misplaced trust co. at May 9, 2008 9:43:05 AM
> The women I meet that are having children move out of Minneapolis and into Saint Paul or other suburbs
Ooh, a subtle slight for St. Paul...now it's just another suburb.
Posted by: Christopher Monnier at May 9, 2008 9:43:19 AM
Jeff, loosen up -- it's New York I'm poking fun at (in a good natured way, I might add). A good rule of thumb here is that if a post really irritates you, there's at least a fifty percent chance you haven't understood it properly.
Posted by: Tyler Cowen at May 9, 2008 9:51:58 AM
The paper barely mentions taxes. Since the rate of non-employment among married women seems to be correlated with the cost of living (or at least of housing) in a city, I would propose the hypothesis that the "marriage penalty" is responsible. The high marginal rate associated with the incomes required to afford life in these locations renders it hardly worthwhile to pay taxes on a menial employment, and the nature of the federal income tax brackets is disincentive for substantial employment when one earner is sufficient for thriving at the location.
Indeed most of the married women I know who live in expensive locations do in fact engage in activities which are untaxed or unreported. While this is strictly anecdotal, it does seem to me that this differs from less expensive locations.
Posted by: rluser at May 9, 2008 10:28:13 AM
The traffic issue might be causative. An extended work day (caused by traffic) that leads to less family time (On NPR yesterday they mentioned that the average working mother gets only three hours daily with her children) could act as a severe disincentive to work. I know my wife's long commute here in Baltimore has made us seriously consider being a single income family. Further, if we didn't have essentially free, high quality child care (two grandmas within five minutes of home)we would have moved that direction already. When my wife's income was higher than mine, the incentive was for me to quit. Now that our income rates are flipping (I finished my masters last year)there are a number of personal and financial reasons for my wife to quit work.
In short long commutes + expensive childcare + social norms = large incentives for women in new york to stay home. You cut into those three hours and DINK housholds will probably start dropping like flies.
Posted by: Eli at May 9, 2008 10:34:55 AM
As a first year resident of Minneapolis what has struck me is how different the Norwegian psyche and culture is from other places I have lived. This statistic wasn't very surprising. I wonder what Rawls idea of fairness would have been had he grown up in a Norwegian home. Tyler, have you ever been to Norway?
As an aside, I would be curious to see the thesis of the study tested more thoroughly. With the I-35W Bridge collapse commutes for certain parts of the city became a lot worse. Its a natural experiment of sorts, though a tragic one. If what they say is true some sort of effect should be able to be seen right?
Posted by: Sam at May 9, 2008 10:43:34 AM
Worldwide and historically speaking, the ability to have an able adult member of the family refrain from marketable work has been a status symbol reserved for the upper middle class.
I'm not quite sure how to parse that.
If by "marketable" you mean "work outside the home(stead)" it's pretty empirically false. But if you mean "work that people ever get paid for", then homemakers clearly do a ton of such work.
Certainly actually having a truly idle adult family member is a luxury; where you and Tyler seem to err is in assuming that married women without outside incomes are in fact idle adult family members (which is what the usage "kept woman" implies).
Posted by: holmegm at May 9, 2008 10:47:54 AM
lived in Twin Cities (St. Paul) for 8 years in the 90s. great place to raise children - and yes we went to Minneapolis regularly (Children's Theatre Company (we saw a great Cinderella panto twice at Christmas and the kids liked the regular shows), Guthrie, Walker, some restaurants, and UofM). now that kids are older I like DC area and being close enough to NYC for quick visits. (See "Chinese food near LaGuardia, NYC")
Posted by: chug at May 9, 2008 10:55:56 AM
Until they do a breakout comparison by income I don't buy the argument. Having a husband that's a banker, in BigLaw or a hedge fund manager probably tamps down the percentage that work.
Posted by: Mo at May 9, 2008 11:30:44 AM
Manhattan is not synonymous with the "New York City area". There are vast discrepancies in income and wealth between the two, especially if the question is the phenomenon of the "kept woman", by which I assume is meant a woman whose primary activities entail planning fundraisers and social events; in other words, a socialite.
Very few socialites live in New York City's suburbs, probably due to network effects: all the other very wealthy people with whom they deal live in New York City (by which is meant: Manhattan below 125th St.), (or Beverly Hills or Palm Beach or Jupiter Island, etc., etc.)
So it's not clear to me what people are talking about when they refer to the "New York City area": are they referring to Manhattan below 125th St? Or are they referring to all of New York City and its surrounding areas? The average income over the latter area is likely smaller than the average income of the nation as a whole. The average income over the former area is likely significantly higher than the average income of the nation as a whole.
Posted by: Dave at May 9, 2008 11:43:31 AM
My uninformed (or anecdotal) guess is that most of the excess of those "kept" women without jobs, compared to other cities, fall into two categories (other than true homemakers, and somewhat including those).
#1. Very rich (upper East/West), where the woman need not work, but instead socializes, does charity work etc, and of course would live nowhere else than Manhattan, ever. (Except the additional houses).
#2. Young couples where the husband has a NY job and the wife, of this rather recent marriage is not currently working. NY is a pretty young city, with a lot of high-paying jobs that people move there for. A new young couple may have the wife not working because they are in NY for his job, or because they are considering or currently having children. She may return to graduate school or career later. They may move in a few years after building up the retirement account at the big NY job. etc.
Posted by: liberty at May 9, 2008 12:42:30 PM
If you're a married woman living in the New York City area, there's a better than 50 percent chance that you don't work... More specifically, only 49 percent of white high school-educated married women
What, so now only white women count as women?
Posted by: Cardinal Fang at May 9, 2008 6:04:19 PM
They talk about why they look at only white women only. Basically, it keeps the sample size big and compares apples to apples. It would be interesting to look at other subsamples too, but I think this is a good start.
I like mouse's Minneapolis/St. Paul answer. Maybe you could deal with that by expanding the range a bit: say do all the big MSA's plus the counties that border them. That would tell you if it's a selection problem or a real labor substitution effect.
Posted by: PLW at May 9, 2008 8:25:32 PM
NYC has lots of high paying jobs and inherited wealth, so more wives can afford to stay home, MSP not so much. Also the culture is very egalitarian/anti-sexist in MSP relatively speaking.
Posted by: Paul N at May 9, 2008 9:20:43 PM
What are the downsides to being a kept man? And where can I sign up to find out?
Posted by: adam at May 9, 2008 9:59:59 PM
Dave: are they referring to Manhattan below 125th St? Or are they referring to all of New York City and its surrounding areas? The average income over the latter area is likely smaller than the average income of the nation as a whole. The average income over the former area is likely significantly higher than the average income of the nation as a whole.
The data refers to the NYC MSA - which is defined here. It includes not just the five boroughs but the surrounding suburban areas, which are quite wealthy. Here's a list of top counties by income in the United States - note how most of the counties in the NYC MSA are quite high on the list.
Posted by: ziel at May 9, 2008 11:19:51 PM
Restricting the comparison to white women likely has a distorting affect. New York City is 37% white non-Hispanic. Minneapolis is 65% white non-Hispanic. If you assume that race is correlated with income, it is likely that certain kinds of jobs, and therefore certain levels of income, are populated more heavily by whites in Minneapolis than they are in New York City. If you're going to compare work-force participation by married white women in the two cities, you need to control for the income of their husbands.
Posted by: Bloix at May 10, 2008 9:10:01 PM
My instinctive response was the same as Bloix (except Bloix actually looked at some data) -- it seems like working with just white women and then comparing different areas with significantly different racial compositions is a sort of bait-and-switch. How many of the married white women of Johannesburg, circa 1980, worked?
Posted by: Lev at May 11, 2008 8:17:47 AM
Referring to the entire NYC metro area:
The average income over the latter area is likely smaller than the average income of the nation as a whole.
You haven't spent much time in and around NYC, have you?
Some of the highest income counties in the country qualify as NYC metro, Westchester NY, Bergen NJ, Fairfield CT. Take a look at Zillow. The average salable residential unit in Brooklyn is close to $1 million. Queens, Bronx are well over $500K. Neighborhoods associated in the public mind with 60s/70s urban blight are now only affordable to the middle-class, or in some cases, the wealthy. There is almost no place left in NYC or it's nearest environs that is affordable on a below-average national income. Are there relatively poor people or areas? Yes, but that is because the cost of housing, commuting and services there makes you poor at incomes that would be fairly comfortable in much of the country. Most of the working poor in NYC metro are making what would be an average income in most of the midwest or south.
The average income of this area, while smaller than the average income in Manhattan, is *quite* a bit higher than that of the nation as a whole. I'd guess that for any reasonable definition of metro NYC it's nearly double the national average.
Even in my distant satellite city of new haven, Mcjobs pay $10-12/hr, but try living in new haven on $12/hr.
Posted by: Michael Sullivan at May 12, 2008 5:51:40 PM
