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‘The Two-Income Trap' by Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi
BLUF:[Free Beacon] "By the usual logic," they write, "sending a second parent into the workforce should make a family more financially secure, not less. But this reasoning ignores an important fact of two-income life. When mothers joined the workforce, the family gave up something of considerable (although unrecognized) economic value: an extra skilled and dedicated adult, available to pitch in to help save the family during times of emergency." This is the two-income trap: A second earner in middle-class households has, paradoxically, rendered them more financially unstable. This simple idea is easy enough to follow, but ominous in its implications. Is Warren arguing (as Tucker Carlson recently contended) that mothers going to work was a disaster for the country? The mass transition of mothers into the workforce is a relatively recent phenomenon. In 1860 just 7 percent of women with children at home were in the labor force. By 1940, 13 percent were, still just one in eight. But, after women went to work en masse during World War II, their labor force participation rate took off. By 1960 it was 30 percent. In 1978 it hit 50 percent. And in 2000 it peaked at 68 percent, before descending slightly to 65 percent today. Posted by: Besoeker 2019-03-24 |
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