Group Pushes Equal Pay to Reduce Number of Children in Poverty

“New analysis finds that closing the wage gap would add $513 billion in wage and salary income to the U.S. economy.”

That’s according to a statistical analysis of federal data by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR).

The group argues that the poverty rate for children with a working mother in the home would see nearly a 50% reduction if women were paid the same as their male counterparts.

Officials add, this would lift 2.5 million kids out of poverty.

Researchers came to these results through the use or regression analysis to consider the relationship of several factors related to women’s and men’s earnings. According to a press release, results found the U.S. economy would have produced additional wage and salary income of $512.6 billion if women received equal pay.

They equate this amount to 2.8 percent of 2016 gross domestic product (GDP).

The release goes on to elaborate on the connection made within the study: Women are the sole or co-breadwinner in half of American families with young children. If women were paid the same as comparable men—men who work the same number of hours, are the same age, have the same level of education, and live in the same region of the country with the same urban/rural status—working women would have earned an average of $6,870 more in a single year.

“Our analysis specifically aims to compare men and women who have similar human capital characteristics,” said IWPR President Heidi Hartmann, Ph.D. “Simply paying women fairly for their work would reduce poverty rates by half for them and their families and put half a trillion dollars in the pockets of working families—is there any current policy initiative that could come close to that? Getting to equal pay should be the policy goal of our lifetime.”

For more information including additional findings from IWPR’s analysis visit iwpr.org.

 

Leave a Reply

%d