The Middle Class Squeeze and Measuring Household Labor
American families are under economic strain, but there is a rousing debate among economists over whether workers and families are doing better than a generation ago-- and what that means for shaping economic and social policy. The American Prospect is hosting a lively debate online on the fate of the middle class and how progressives need to tailor their message accordingly.
But largely missing in the debate is a measure of the value of the unpaid work of stay-at-home moms of a generation ago-- and the financial costs for two-earner families of replacing it.
Stephen Rose of Third Way makes the case that the middle class is doing better than many progressives think, while Lawrence Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute disagrees with Rose, highlighting the stagnation of middle class families incomes in the last generation, even as wealth at the top of the economic ladder exploded. Read the debate and the responses by other commentators.
But here's the point only touched on in the debate: a key reason for gains in income by middle class families in the last generation is the entrance of more women into the workforce and the increase in two-paycheck families. Yet, there's often little discussion of the economic value of the unpaid work women were doing in the home in the past -- and of the increasing costs to families of replacing it with paid child care and takeout meals.
Rose makes a quick statistical comment arguing that you can't explain increased household income solely based on increased female participation in the workforce, but doesn't address the value or costs of losing that previously unmeasured unpaid household labor.
As a recent National Academies Press study emphasized, US government economic data has never developed a consistent measure of the economic value of unpaid labor in the home, so the statistical debate on family income largely ignores the issue. Only in 2003 did the Department of Labor begin a new survey of work in the home to begin trying to grapple with the value of unpaid and unmeasured economic activity in the home.
But for two-paycheck families struggling with child care bills and other costs, the economic value of the unpaid labor done by all the stay-at-home moms of a generation ago is clear-- and economic statistics should catch up. And state policymakers need to step up with more help for working parents, both with policies to promote a more family-friendly workplace that respects time taken off by parents for family needs and a greater commitment to promote affordable, quality child care for families.
Comments (5)
Clinton's welfare reform established once and for all that there is nothing worthwhile or respectable about staying home and caring for ones own young children. The only value a mother has in our capitalist world is to "earn" a paycheck--and pay someone else to raise her kids.
September 21, 2006 5:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yep mothers don't have a value in our society anymore.
Real mothers let stressed out, minimum wage daycare workers and illegal alien nannies raise their children while they have meaningful and glorious careers in the corporate world pulling 12 hour days in some cube pushing paper.
All the while their child grows sullen, detached and eventually sees the mother as a stranger while the daycare worker or nanny are his/her real mother. After all the child is spending most of its waking time and formative years not with the mother but with some underpaid stranger.
Personally I'm just waiting for the day when the professional man or woman just out-sources child rearing altogether. They'll buy a kid in some 3rd world hellhole and pay some foreign family to raise it for them. Then parade the poor child around like a novelty item to their friends during the holiday season.
September 21, 2006 6:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
You know, I really wonder how many moms stayed at home caring for their kids. Ever wonder how many moms were waiting on tables, cleaning hotel rooms, cleaning other peoples' homes, cooking in restaurants or in private homes, altering peoples clothes, working in laundries and factories, telephone exchanges, beauty salons, teaching, the secretarial pool, the dry cleaners, cleaning offices and scrubbing hospital floors, nursing, harvesting crops, entertaining on tv, sewing garments, working as maids or in canneries while we all pretended that women stayed at home and took care of the kids...gosh, those were the good old days, weren't they?
September 21, 2006 7:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
I can understand why the question of whether workers are better off today is so difficult to answer. My gut tells me that materially we are probably better off. We have more and better "stuff." But we are working hard to get the stuff. The American Dream is about doing better than your parents. Many people achieve that but at a huge price.
Another issue that I think is important to look at is the impact of technology. Our laptops and cell phones are supposed to be devices that save labor and increase productivity. The problem is that the productivity gains flow upward while workers pay a price by never truly being free from the demands of work.
W
David Pincus
We need a history fix: Gore in '08
September 21, 2006 9:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Here's my personal take on the issue.
There is no way that my spouse and I could live our modest middle class life on only one of our paychecks. We do not have extravagant tastes, nor do we drive fancy cars. Our house is nice but it costs far less than the national average. We paint our own walls and buy our furniture at garage sales.
My wife is a mid-level higher-ed administrator and I am the chef at a small restaurant who makes a few bucks with freelance writing. Combined we make a decent living in rural New England college town.
A generation ago, either one of our jobs would have supported a similar life-style all by itself. In 2006, not a chance.
Kids only make the equation muddier. Above-the-board infant care costs anywhere from $600 to $2000 a month depending on where you live. All of a sudden, half of the second income goes to child-care. And heaven forbid you should have more than one young child. Frankly it is a Faustian Bargain.
Single parents?!?! They are truly amazing when they manage to pull off the job of providing and raising kids on a fourth or fifth quintile income. Usually you will find a family member or friend helping with childcare. And when they don't, too often that is when the real problems begin.
The entire modern conservative concept of "household income" is simply a deceptive ploy used by Heritage and Cato types to say that since you have cable TV, you must be rich. It is, frankly speaking, a bullshit argument that is highly offensive to those of us who actually earn a wage.
September 23, 2006 12:37 AM | Reply | Permalink