Early Motherhood Eats Women's Wage-Earning Ability
Slate's Steven E. Landsburg analyzes Amalia Miller's survey:
Women agonize over the trade-offs between family and career. Now, thanks to Amalia Miller, a young economist at the University of Virginia, there is a new and particularly vivid way to think about those trade-offs.On average, Miller has found in a new paper, a woman in her 20s will increase her lifetime earnings by 10 percent if she delays the birth of her first child by a year. Part of that is because she'll earn higher wages—about 3 percent higher—for the rest of her life; the rest is because she'll work longer hours. For college-educated women, the effects are even bigger. For professional women, the effects are bigger yet—for these women, the wage hike is not 3 percent, but 4.7 percent.
So, if you have your first child at 24 instead of 25, you're giving up 10 percent of your lifetime earnings. The wage hit comes in two pieces. There's an immediate drop, followed by a slower rate of growth—right up to the day you retire. So, a 34-year-old woman with a 10-year-old child will (again on average) get smaller percentage raises on a smaller base salary than an otherwise identical woman with a 9-year-old. Each year of delayed childbirth compounds these benefits, at least for women in their 20s. Once you're in your 30s, there's far less reward for continued delay. Surprisingly, it appears that none of these effects are mitigated by the passage of family-leave laws.
Considering that marriages end, maybe women who are fulltime moms -- and not the kind whose fulltime work involve a lot of yoga classes and nail salon visits, but real mothering -- should be paid a salary (by their husbands, not the state) for being mothers, or, at the very least, have their husbands pay into a retirement fund. Work that is not paid is not valued. But, not only that, what happens when the "til death do us part" guy leaves a woman at 40 for a younger model? Women who marry or assume they're in a relationshp for the long haul don't want to consider that happening. But, women in general would be much better off if they have it in mind that they can never rely on anyone but themselves to support themselves. Too many women are financially helpless out of wishful thinking and hope. Dumb.
P.S. Stay-at-home moms are occasionally dads.
Well, that seems to pretty much be the practice of most college educated women I know, most of whom had their kids between 30 and 40. Did the study give what the ideal age was to maximize earnings? Was it 30? It seems risky to wait until the late 30s, as so many women seem to have fertility issues by that time.
Pat Saperstein at December 12, 2005 10:38 AM
thanks. just forwarded this to my junior in college daughter....
hrc at December 12, 2005 3:10 PM
Thanks...always good to know that I'm not just talking to myself!
Amy Alkon at December 12, 2005 3:28 PM
Amy, I have to agree. Seeing how my mom struggled financially after our parents' divorce (having been out of the workforce for 17 years), I made the decision that I would always be able to support myself financially. I didn't feel settled enough either emotionally or financially to have a child until I was in my very late 30's. I've continued to work full-time, and feel it was the right decision for me. There's a lot of cultural pressure on women these days to quit the job and have babies early. It's good for women to leave the rose-colored glasses on the night table when making these decisions, and consider the financial ramifications as well as the emotional ones.
deja pseu at December 12, 2005 7:01 PM
I saw this study in Slate or Salon, and couldn't figure it out for the life of me. If I wait 10 years to have my baby, do my earnings go up 100 percent?
rebecca at December 14, 2005 8:30 AM
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