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RESEARCH MAKING THE NEWS


Women do 2 more hours of housework daily than men, study says

Drew Weisholtz││January 22, 2020


Women in the United States spend two hours more each day cleaning, cooking, taking care of children and doing other unpaid work than men, according to a report by Oxfam and the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. The study, which analyzes data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ American Time Use Survey, found that women aged 15 and older spend 5.7 hours daily doing housework and looking after kids and elders, while men in the same age range do so for 3.6 hours each day. That’s about 37% more time dedicated to keeping things running smoothly in the house.


Citing: Providing Unpaid Household and Care Work in the United States: Uncovering Inequality by Cynthia Hess, Ph.D., Tanima Ahmed, M.Phil, and Jeff Hayes, Ph.D. at Institute for Women’s Policy Research

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Joan Lunden presses lawmakers to support paid family leave legislation

Emily Disalvo │ │January 29, 2020


Former “Good Morning America” host Joan Lunden is calling on Congress to pass legislation providing family and medical leave, saying the positive experience she had after giving birth to her first child should be one that’s enjoyed by all Americans. Speaking at a House Ways and Means Committee hearing, Lunden recalled how her previous employer, ABC News, allowed her to not only take paid time off to care for her infant daughter, but also permitted her to bring her daughter to work. Lunden said that women across the country at the time sent her letters explaining how meaningful benefits like hers would be in their own lives. Forty years later, Lunden, 69, said that families have the same desire — to take paid time off to care for family members or themselves.


Citing: H.R.1185 - FAMILY Act Sponsored by Representative Rosa L. DeLauro and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand

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Overhaul US labor laws to boost workers' power, new report urges

Steven Greenhouse ││January 23, 2020


More than 70 scholars, union leaders, economists and activists have called for a far-reaching overhaul of American labor laws to vastly increase workers’ power on the job and in politics, recommending new laws to make unionizing easier and to elect worker representatives to corporate boards. The Clean Slate report, nearly two years in the making, aims to rethink American labor law from scratch. “We firmly believe that we’re past the point of tinkering around the edges, that to really fix the problems in our economy and political system we need a fundamental rethinking of labor law,” said Sharon Block, one of the report’s main authors and executive director of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School.


Citing: Clean Slate for Worker Power Building a Just Economy and Democracy at Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School

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Five years after an abortion, most women say they made the right decision

Ariana Eunjung Cha ││January 12, 2020


There’s been quite a lot of research about women’s emotions immediately following an abortion. Some experience sadness, guilt and anger; others feel relief. For many, it’s a mix of all of these and more. But what about in the long term? Researchers from the University of California at San Francisco delved into this question in an analysis of 667 women recruited from 30 sites across the country as part of the Turnaway Study — a landmark body of research about how abortion affects women physically, socially, emotionally and economically.


Citing: Emotions and decision rightness over five years following an abortion: An examination of decision difficulty and abortion stigma by Corinne H. Rocca, Goleen Samaria, Diana G. Foster, Heather Gould, Katrina Kimport at Social Science & Medicine

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Alcohol Deaths Have Risen Sharply, Particularly Among Women

Matt Richtel ││January 10, 2020


The number of women drinking dangerous amounts of alcohol is rising sharply in the United States. That finding was among several troubling conclusions in an analysis of death certificates published Friday by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. The analysis looked at deaths nationwide each year from 1999 through 2017 that were reported as being caused at least partly by alcohol, including acute overdose, its chronic use, or in combination with other drugs. The death rate tied to alcohol rose 51 percent overall in that time period, taking into account population growth. Most noteworthy to researchers was that the rate of deaths among women rose much more sharply, up 85 percent. In sheer numbers, 18,072 women died from alcohol in 2017, according to death certificates, compared with 7,662 in 1999.


Citing: Alcohol-related deaths increasing in the United States at The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA)

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NEW RESEARCH REPORTS



Women-Owned Businesses Have Increased in Number, but Still Face Obstacles to Growth

Zohal Barsi, Jessica Milli, Ph.D. │Institute for Women’s Policy Research│February 2020


Women have made considerable progress in increasing their representation among business owners in recent years. The number of women-owned businesses increased in almost every industry between 2002 and 2012, at rates higher than those of men-owned businesses. This growth contributed to an overall increase in the share of businesses that were women-owned, and was largely driven by women of color. Drawing on the most recent publicly available data, from 2012, this briefing paper reviews trends in business ownership since 1997, analyzes the demographic characteristics of business owners by race, ethnicity and gender, highlights differences in women’s business ownership by state, and provides data on gender differences in business sector, revenue, and access to finance.

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Who’s paying now? The explicit and implicit costs of the current early care and education system

Elise Gould, Hunter Blair │Economic Policy Institute│January 15, 2020


The chronic underfunding of early care and education (ECE) is compromising the well-being of educators and the children they teach and threatening the economic security of millions of families in the United States. The current ECE system demands large contributions from the parents of young children, both through payments for ECE services and through forgone income when parents drop out of or reduce their participation in paid labor markets to provide care on their own. In a high-quality system that invests in ECE teachers and pays them like their K–8 peers, these teachers will see their wages rise by $80.3 billion each year. In essence, this number can be seen as a measure of how much today’s ECE system underpays teachers and keeps prices inefficiently low. Sufficient investment in a high quality system will more than pay for itself in the long run.

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How Do Employers Use Compensation History?: Evidence From a Field Experiment

Moshe A. Barach, John J. Horton │The National Bureau of Economic Research│January 2020


We report the results of a field experiment in which treated employers could not observe the compensation history of their job applicants. Treated employers responded by evaluating more applicants, and evaluating those applicants more intensively. They also responded by changing what kind of workers they evaluated: treated employers evaluated workers with 5% lower past average wages and hired workers with 13%lower past average wages. Conditional upon bargaining, workers hired by treated employers struck better wage bargains for themselves

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The Economic Consequences of Being Denied an Abortion

Sarah Miller, Laura R. Wherry, Diana Greene Foster │The National Bureau of Economic Research│January 2020


Restrictions on abortion are pervasive, yet relatively little is known about the financial and economic impact of being denied an abortion on pregnant women who seek one. This paper evaluates the economic consequences of being denied an abortion on the basis of the gestational age of the pregnancy. Our analysis relies on new linkages to ten years of administrative credit report data for participants in the Turnaway Study, the first study to collect high-quality, longitudinal data on women receiving or being denied a wanted abortion in the United States. We find evidence of a large and persistent increase in financial distress for the women who were denied an abortion that is sustained for the 6 years following the intended abortion.

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Unemployment and men's entrance into female-dominated jobs

Jill E. Yavorsky, Janette Dill│Social Science Research│January 2020


Despite the contraction of many male-dominated occupations, men have made limited progress in entering female-dominated jobs. Using monthly employment histories from the SIPP, we examine whether individual economic conditions—such as a period of unemployment—are associated with men subsequently pursuing female-dominated work. Specifically, we ask whether men are more likely to enter female-dominated jobs after unemployment, compared to men who take a new job directly from employment. We find that unemployment significantly increases the odds of men entering female-dominated work among men who make job transitions. Accordingly, this study reveals a critical occupational route that may allow men to remain upwardly mobile after involuntary unemployment.

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It’s Time to Care: A Detailed Profile of America’s Direct Care Workforce

Kezia Scales, PhD │PHI │January 21, 2020


Every day, nearly 4.5 million direct care workers support older adults and people with disabilities across the United States. Who are these workers? And how has their role changed over time? It’s Time to Care: A Detailed Profile of America’s Direct Care Workforce provides a detailed overview of the direct care workforce (including key concepts and definitions), an analysis of how this role has evolved, and a statistical profile of the workforce with key demographics, socio-economic characteristics, and future employment projections. This report is the first installment in a year-long series of reports that will examine the importance and impact of the direct care workforce.

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The Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR) is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization that conducts and communicates research to inspire public dialogue, shape policy, and improve the lives and opportunities of women of diverse backgrounds, circumstances, and experiences. Find out more about IWPR at iwpr.org.
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