This AP story shot around a bit early this week:
White women with BA’s lag in pay, census finds
Washington – Black and Asian women with bachelor’s degrees earn slightly more than similarly educated white women, and white men with four-year degrees make more than anyone else.
A white woman with a bachelor’s degree typically earned nearly $37,800 in 2003, compared with nearly $43,700 for a college-educated Asian woman and $41,100 for a college-educated black woman, according to figures being released today by the Census Bureau. Hispanic women took home slightly less at $37,600 a year[….]
A white male with a college diploma earns far more than any similarly educated man or woman – in excess of $66,000 a year, according to the Census Bureau. Among men with bachelor’s degrees, Asians earned more than $52,000 a year, Hispanics earned $49,000 and blacks earned more than $45,000.
This story was actually better than some, because it didn’t bury the fact that regardless of race, women as a group earn far less than men.
So why are black women and Asian women with degrees earning more annually than white women? As far as I can tell, it’s because white women, on average, are more likely to be part-time workers. As Tiffany at Blackfeminism.org pointed out, the Institute for Women’s Policy Research took a closer look at the data. They found that when the comparison was limited to only those women who work full-time, year-round, the “white disadvantage” disappeared:
According to recently released 2004 data from the U.S. Census Bureau, African American women working full-time, full-year earn $26,992 in median annual earnings, compared with $32,036 earned by comparable white women workers.
Among those with a bachelor’s degree alone, African American women earn $38,160 compared with $40,700 earned by comparable white women. African American women are also less likely than white women to hold bachelor’s degrees or higher, with only 16.7 percent of African American women holding bachelor’s degrees in 2004, compared with 24.6 percent of white women.
Asian American women, in contrast, earned more than white women even when comparing year-round, full-time workers. This may possibly reflect higher average educational attainment among Asian American women than white women. However, Asian American women – like Latinas, Black women, and American Indian women – are more likely to live in poverty than white women. And in turn, white women are more likely to live in poverty than white men.
I’ve already seen some anti-feminists argue that the same thing is true of the wage gap between men and women – that is, the reason women appear to earn less is that men work more hours than women. It’s true that men work more hours; however, the wage gap is much larger than can be accounted for just by the difference in work hours. More here.
Bear in mind that “living in poverty” doesn’t always mean that you’re poor.
Care to expand a little on that?
As far as I know, “living in poverty” is defined as earning an income below the poverty line, and not having any fortune, or any other source of income. If you choose to live a spartan life (below your means), it doesn’t mean you live in poverty.
In the context of the IWPR analysis, they say they were using census bureau statistics. So it’s a fairly safe guess that “live in poverty,” in this context, means coming below the poverty threshold.
Now, I can certainly think of ways that you can be below the poverty threshold and still not be poor; for instance, someone being supported generously by a wealthy person who is not related to them. Or a wealthy person who lives entirely on capital gains. However, I doubt that these are all that common; more importantly, for the purpose of this post, I don’t know of any reason to believe that these situations are more common among black women than white women.
On the other hand, it’s also damned easy to be above the poverty line and still be poor. The poverty thresholds are very old-fashioned and underestimate real poverty. I should probably do a post on that.
By “not being poor” I don’t necessarily mean having a higher standard of living (provided through unrecognized gifts or the like).
Example: A woman quits her $60,000 a year job at HP to go back and get her master’s in clinical psychology so she can become a family therapist. She spends several years with very little income (but no real financial worries), living off of savings or adjusting her lifestyle downward while she goes to school. When she’s finished, she becomes a therapist and again makes a good living. Nobody would accurately describe this person as “poor” in the same sense that we mean when we talk about, say, some family in a barrio that can’t make ends meet and gets state assistance.
But in the statistics, they both look the same.
Humph! I’m a black woman with TWO bachelor’s degrees and I make waaaaaay less than what is posted in this article! I think it’s all crap…bottom line we’re all still underpaid if you are not a white male! That’s the REAL story here…
I am a hispanic female in the US Air Force. My job is HIGHLY technical, our annual, sporadic, quarterly, and need based performance tests mean that I have to make a minimum of an 85%, (out of a 100%), or above, to “pass” and maintain currency & continue to work in this field. Most of the passing Air Force grades are roughly 60%.
I make the absolute same as a white male, asian female, or any other ethnicity… with the same amount of experience. Anyone wanna comment on that? Yes, I must risk my life for the current persidents’ political wanderings, but I’m an equal in pay, but normally not in responsibility. That’s another post. There are politically left leaning people in the military. honest.
Sashinka –
I’d say that your experience isn’t representative of what every person in the economy experiences.
First of all, obviously there are always individual exceptions to any trend you can name. That doesn’t mean that the trend doesn’t exist.
Second of all, my guess is that pay scales in the military are often more regulated, and thus have less room for discrimination, than pay scales in most of the economy.
Okay, so long as her student loans, interest income, and work income doesn’t bring her above $9500 a year – and as long as she doesn’t receive gifts from family members or whomever to help her along – and as long as she doesn’t live with a husband or family member who is working – and as long as she doesn’t live in a dorm – then yes, she’d be officially counted as below the poverty line.
But what I’m not sure is, why do you think this is a significant observation?
Given the size of the economy, I’m not sure that any measure of “poverty” is possible that would correctly account for every possible situation. The question is, is the situation you describe (basically, a well-off person voluntarily choosing to live off savings for a few years before voluntarily returning to being well-off) common enough so that poverty statistics are significantly warped by their inclusion?
In other words, the current poverty rate is about 10%. If eliminating “false positives” like what you describe from the poverty rate would change it to about 9.5%, then I would agree you’re talking about a significant problem in our measurement of poverty. If it would change it from 10% to 9.99%, however, then who cares?
My guess is that the problem of “false positives” is very small compared to the problem of “false negatives.”
She spends several years with very little income (but no real financial worries), living off of savings
That’s a lot of savings.
The question is, is the situation you describe (basically, a well-off person voluntarily choosing to live off savings for a few years before voluntarily returning to being well-off) common enough so that poverty statistics are significantly warped by their inclusion?
How many people go to college? The arc described is what most middle-class college students do.
I do agree that there are probably a lot of false negatives in the mix as well, people who really are in bad shape but who for one reason or another don’t register as “poor”.
“How many people go to college? The arc described is what most middle-class college students do.”
I would think most middle-class college students are supported by their parents, and are listed as dependents. They have little or no income, but unless their parents live under the poverty line, they wouldn’t statistically be counted.
Robert: Funny, I thought that middle-class people who returned to college either did so by the financial support of a spouse, or by working full-time during the day and attending class part-time at night. Perhaps we have a different definition of “middle class”, but where I come from, anyone who can take off from work and live off of savings to go to school isn’t middle class, but well-to-do.
Personally, I have a problem with the idea of selectively defining poverty on a basis other than financial resources, or selecting a hierarchy of who’s “really” poor. Sure, an unemployed person like myself, who has the skills necessary to return to a high-paying job when one crops up is better off than a person who does not yet have the education or training to get a high-paying job (faster track out of poverty once employment is found)…..but in the meantime, I’m having the same struggle paying my bills. My journeyman card gives me the potential for high earnings and benefits, but until I find a job I have to make do with an unemployment check! Groceries and utilities aren’t any cheaper for me just because I have that “potential”, y’know.
In other words, most of us rely on full-time employment to keep us out of poverty. An education is not the same as a safety net.
This person still reports those savings on a tax return form, so wouldn’t she be excluded from being classified as “poor”?
This person still reports those savings on a tax return form, so wouldn’t she be excluded from being classified as “poor”??
Savings are not reported on your taxes.
Savings aren’t, but interest income is. Frankly, anyone who could literally live off of their savings for the time it takes to earn a degree probably has enough money to not need a degree for earning purposes!
I mean seriously….two to four years of living off of savings? With no other income? Who can do that?!
Especially since we’re talking about tuition on top of living expenses. I’m with La Lubu. Most of the people I know either take classes part time while working full time, take classes full time while working part time, or take out huge loans. And people who enter the workforce for the first time, after earning their first degrees, are often saddled with enough debt to prevent them from saving much money.
I think Robert’s pointed out a genuine flaw in how we measure poverty and wealth in the US; we typically don’t pay attention to wealth, only to income. Among other things, this means that we vastly underestimate the actual wealth gap between blacks and whites.
On the other hand, Robert’s claim that what he described is “is what most middle-class college students do” is simply not true, as Avener and La Luba pointed out. The typical middle-class college student either a) lives in a dorm, b) lives with their spouse/family which is above the poverty line, or c) recieves over $9,573 a year in income, student loans, grants, and gifts from family combined.
If a student is in any of those situations, then they’re not counted as being below the poverty line. And Robert, those situations are FAR more typical of how middle-class folks go to college than your example of someone who lives off of their savings.
As someone with a wife in the military and my self being a minority in the military ““ our experiences have been the same. Even though the pay scales are the same regardless of your gender or ethnicity there are many areas of discretion that lead to pay disparities. Women and minority males face obstacles that cause them to not get paid equally to their peers even with this system.
For example ““Near the end of Marine Officer Basic School my wife was ranked 12th out of 200 Officers. The last graded evolution was the Platoon Commander’s leadership ranking. My wife had scored the highest in “attack planning”? and tactical leadership. Regardless, her Platoon Commander ranked her second from the bottom in leadership (the first two rankings she received throughout the course was 4th and 8th out of 30). The only person ranked lower was the token black male in her platoon. She was ranked lower than one of the other women in her platoon (still ranked near the bottom) who was balling when she was in her leadership role, during an important exercise (balling in front of everyone ““ not something a Marine Officer does ““ tends to make your troops lose confidence in your ability not to get them killed). Due to my wife’s PC ranking, her overall ranking dropped from the top five percent to below the thirtieth percentile and from second in her platoon to the bottom half. My wife was guaranteed to be a pilot but most of the people at the bottom of the class typically get the bad duty stations and bad jobs (supply officer at Camp LeJeune, North Carolina). It is no coincidence that most of the women and black officers in the Marine Corps are supply officers in Albany, GA; Jacksonville, NC; Barstow, CA.
In flight school, again at the top of her class, she had her third to last flight with an instructor who made it known that he thought women should not be in the military. She ended up failing his flight. Never got less than an outstanding in any of her other 25 flights before or the three flights after, however, that was enough to drop her rank to number two ““ keeping her from her dream of flying fighter jets.
There are so many factors that lead to the pay disparity other than merely pay. On a positive note, our culture, over the last forty years, has made significant progress (both good and bad) in changing over a thousand years of cultural programming.
jstevenson is right. That’s pretty much the way it works in the trades, too; women and men of color get laid off first, so even though we earn the same wages and benefits, we don’t earn as much on a yearly basis. Also, we aren’t promoted to foreman’s positions, even when we literally have twice the experience of the recently topped-out white male foreman!
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