The Two-Income Trap - Elizabeth Warren [119]
Chapter 5
1 Lenore J. Weitzman, The Divorce Revolution: The Unexpected Social and Economic Consequences for Women and Children in America (New York: Free Press, 1985): 323.
2 A subsequent analysis of Weitzman’s data showed the decline for women to be 27 percent and an increase for men of 10 percent. Richard R. Peterson, “A Re-evaluation of the Economic Consequences of Divorce,” American Sociological Review 61 (June 1996): 528, 532; see also Lenore J. Weitzman, “The Economic Consequences of Divorce Are Still Unequal: Comment on Peterson,” American Sociological Review 61 (June 1996): 537; Richard R. Peterson, “Statistical Errors, Faulty Conclusions, Misguided Policy: Reply to Weitzman,” American Sociological Review 61 (June 1996): 539. While Weitzman’s study is controversial and her reported numbers are disputed, the overall effect of divorce on women and the greater economic suffering that divorce inflicts on women are generally well established in the scholarly literature.
3 Suzanne M. Bianchi, Lekha Subaiya, and Joan R. Kahn, “The Gender Gap in the Economic Well-Being of Nonresident Fathers and Custodial Mothers,” Demography 36 (May 1999): 195-203.
4 Danielle Crittenden, What Our Mothers Didn’t Tell Us: Why Happiness Eludes the Modern Woman (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999): 133-134.
5 U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Table 177, “Total Fall Enrollment in Degree-Granting Institutions, by Level of Enrollment, Sex, Attendance, Status, and Type and Control of Institution, 1999.” Available at http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2002/digest2001/tables/dt177.asp [11/21/02].
6 Women now constitute 45 percent of managers, compared with just 18 percent in 1970. James Heintz, Nancy Folbre, and the Center for Popular Economics, The Ultimate Field Guide to the U.S. Economy (New York: New Press, 2000), p. 54; Diana Furchtgott-Roth and Christine Stolba, Women’s Figures: An Illustrated Guide to the Economic Progress of Women in America (Washington, DC: AEI Press, 1999) p. 19; U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Table 226.
7 Furchtgott-Roth and Stolba, Women’s Figures, p. xvii.
8 In 2000, fully employed women with children under eighteen had median weekly earnings of $479, compared with $499 for women with no children. U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Highlights of Women’s Earnings in 2000, BLS Report 952 (August 2001), Table 9.
9 Even though 2001 was a recession year, the unemployment rate among women, at less than 5 percent, was still lower than it was at any point during the 1970s. The number of women-owned businesses has grown from fewer than 1 million in 1972 to more than 8 million in 1997. Furchtgott-Roth and Stolba, Women’s Figures, p. 37. The proportion of wives with higher annual earnings than their husbands nearly doubled in just sixteen years, from 11 percent in 1980 to 21 percent in 1996. Richard B. Freeman, “The Feminization of Work in the U.S.: A New Era for (Man)kind?” in Gender and the Labor Market: Econometric Evidence on Obstacles in Achieving Gender Equality, edited by Siv S. Gustaffson and Daniele E. Meulders (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), Table 1.4, Percentage of Women with Higher Earnings Than Their Husband, 1970-96.
10 In 1975, Congress passed Title IV-D of the Social Security Act, which expanded child support enforcement by states. The 1984 Child Support Enforcement Amendments required states to withhold wages from noncustodial parents who fell behind in their child support payments. In 1988, Congress enacted immediate wage withholding, which went into effect in January 1994 for all new child support orders. For a discussion of child support enforcement reforms, see Elaine Sorensen and Ariel Halpern, “Child Support Enforcement: How Well Is It Doing?” Urban Institute, Assessing the New Federalism, Discussion Paper 99-11 (Washington, DC: Urban Institute, December 1999), pp. 11-16.
11 For example, a California