Why Most Married Women in NYC Don’t Work
Posted by Mr. Thoughtful on May 9, 2008
I came across an interesting analysis entitled “Why Don’t Married Women in New York Work”. New York City was the only city in the US in which most married women didn’t hold down jobs.
If you’re a married woman living in the New York City area, there’s a better than 50 percent chance that you don’t work, according to a recent analysis of Census data by economists affiliated with the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank.
More specifically, only 49 percent of white high school-educated married women in their prime working ages were holding down jobs in the New York area as of the 2000 Census. To put that in perspective, there are roughly 2 million woman over 15-years-old who are married in the New York area.
The national average for this particular demographic is 67 percent. At the other end of the spectrum is Minneapolis where almost 80 percent of these married women are employed — that’s larger than the percentage of working men aged 25 and older in the U.S.
http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/odd-numbers/2008/05/08/why-dont-married-women-in-new-york-work
Hat tip: www.marginalrevolution.com
The fascinating question is why. The author suggests several possibilities. First, traffic congestion. If you click on the link above to see the full article you will find a list of cities with the percentages of married women who work. Almost all of them are cities with famously bad traffic. The explanation would be it’s more time-consuming and stressful to face rush-hour traffic, so more married women decide not to work.
This sounds plausible, but I’m not convinced. I suspect there has to be more to the explanation than just bad traffic. Another suggestion made is there are lots of well-off guys who live in NYC, so their wives can afford not to work. That’s probably a good part of the explanation. But I’m curious why there is no great correlation between income and non-working wives in all the other cities.
Any thoughts?
