Men & Women & Work

Men & Women At Work:

Cassandra has a good post today on women and the workplace. Her aside in the comments is also an interesting conjecture:

Men's wages have stagnated over the past generation, while women entered the work force for the first time.

Coincidence? I wonder.

I think there may be two things going on here:

1. A man who has a wife at home FT caring for home and family is freed up to focus his time and attention on his job. He also, as the lone wage earner, has more pressure to succeed.

2. Suddenly flooding the market with workers who don't negotiate for their salaries may well have had a depressing effect on the incomes of men.

I recall an earlier post at VC discussed the claim that women don't negotiate for salary, on average. (I am sure, however, that our friend Texas99 is a vigorous exception to the rule. :)

In any event, as Paul Ibrahim points out, it's no surprise given the difference in men's brains:

Being male, Caplan writes, “has 15.7% of the effect of a Ph.D. in economics[.]”

It's science.