The Producers

The decline of marriage and male wages is a problem of equality, not inequality.

By JAMES TARANTO

Former Enron adviser Paul Krugman has expanded the blog post we criticized Wednesday into a full-length column, and in doing so made explicit a predictable fallacy in his thinking. To review, Krugman's argument is that the sharp decline in marriage rates among less-affluent white Americans, documented by Charles Murray in his new book, "Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010," is "mainly about money" as opposed to "morals." Here's the meat of Krugman's argument:

When you see a modest rise in incomes for the lower tiers of the income distribution, you have to realize that all--yes, all--of this rise comes from the women, both because more women are in the paid labor force and because women's wages aren't as much below male wages as they used to be.

For lower-education working men, however, it has been all negative. Adjusted for inflation, entry-level wages of male high school graduates have fallen 23 percent since 1973. Meanwhile, employment benefits have collapsed. In 1980, 65 percent of recent high-school graduates working in the private sector had health benefits, but, by 2009, that was down to 29 percent.

So we have become a society in which less-educated men have great difficulty finding jobs with decent wages and good benefits. Yet somehow we're supposed to be surprised that such men have become less likely to participate in the work force or get married, and conclude that there must have been some mysterious moral collapse caused by snooty liberals.

Krugman concludes by complaining that conservatives are engaged in an "attempt to divert the national conversation away from soaring inequality." But the decline in low-skilled men's wages and marital prospects isn't the result of big Wall Street bonuses or lavish pay for Ivy League professors. It is a problem not of inequality but of equality--equality between the sexes.

Podcast

James Taranto on equality and the decline of marriage.

As Krugman himself acknowledges, women make much more money today than they did 40 years ago, both because their wages have risen relative to men's and because many more of them are in the workforce. We argued Wednesday that the dramatic increase in female labor-force participation likely contributed to the decline in male wages by increasing the supply of labor. This prompted some push-back from free-market types, as we noted yesterday. Today, however, we'd like to look at the other side of the equation.
In 1960, according to the Pew Research Center, 72% of adults without a college education were married. In 2010, that proportion had declined to 47%. Many things changed over that half-century, but one of them is that marriage became a very different economic proposition for women.
Fifty years ago, a two-income household was unusual. In most cases when a woman married, she could expect to be supported financially by her husband. The 21st-century wife is expected to pull her own weight financially even if her husband's earning power hasn't diminished. This is called liberation.
There are still economic benefits to marriage, including the sharing of expenses and benefits (although there are also tax and welfare benefits to remaining single). But a woman's incentive to marry, and to insist on marriage as a condition for a sexual relationship, was much more powerful when marriage entailed her complete financial support.
Taking issue with yesterday's follow-up, reader Chad Tucker writes:

I read your column every day, and generally I love it. The lead item in Thursday's entry, however, made me cringe. None of the commenters on WSJ.com have yet brought up the single pertinent fact regarding the debate, so I decided to weigh in here.

That pertinent fact is: Say's Law. Say phrased it, "Supply creates its own demand." John Stuart Mill phrased it, "Consumption co-exists with production. Production is the cause, the sole cause of demand. It never furnishes supply without furnishing demand, both at the same time and to an equal extent."

Say's Law, postulated over 100 years before Keynesianism, refutes Keynesianism, so there is a bit of controversy here. But even Keynesians don't dispute that it is mostly true; Keynesianism is a doctrine for what to do on those rare occasions when (Keynesians believe) Say's Law doesn't apply.

"Demand," in an economic sense, is not Veronica from Willy Wonka, or an OWS protestor, petulantly screaming "I want it now!" Instead, it is someone offering to exchange something of value for money, goods, or services. A woman who is not part of the labor force only has one thing of value to exchange for money, goods or services, and that trade is illegal in most states. Consequently, although it is indeed counterintuitive "to suggest that a woman's entering the workforce, on average, increases the demand for labor as much as or more than it increases the supply," it is a counterintuitive truth.

As an aside, in order to argue sensibly that increased participation in the labor force by women has reduced prevailing wages, one would have to argue that their entry has reduced the marginal productivity of labor. Many jokes could be made here; I will leave them to the professionals.

The thread that unravels this argument is the following assertion: "A woman who is not part of the labor force only has one thing of value to exchange for money, goods or services, and that trade is illegal in most states." Tucker is being facetious, of course. If "that trade" were legal, those engaged in it would be part of the labor force.
More pertinently, the statement is not true. A woman in 1960 had much more than "one thing of value" to offer a prospective husband in exchange for his financial support--although, to be sure, that thing was a far more valuable bargaining chip before the sexual revolution. She also offered companionship. She offered a promise of fidelity, so that the husband could be secure that any children for whom he assumed responsibility were his own. She offered a lifelong commitment, in contrast with today's "easy," though often emotionally and financially devastating, divorce.

Her work didn't count.

And she did a lot of work: cooking, cleaning, caring for children and performing myriad other vital household tasks. But because this labor was performed as part of a personal relationship rather than a commercial one, it didn't show up in the economic statistics. To put it another way, the value of "women's work" was immeasurable, in both senses of the word.
Thus it is a fiction of economics to suggest that increased female labor-force participation was a new source of production. It was, instead, a reallocation of productive resources from homes to offices. No doubt on balance that has been a tonic for the commercial economy. But it has imposed significant social costs.
Abortifacient Shell Game
President Obama has partially climbed down from his decree that Catholic institutions must insure their employees for abortifacient drugs and sterilization proceedings in violation of religious law, ABC News reports:

"Religious organizations won't have to pay for these services and no religious institution will have to provide these services directly," the president announced from the White House briefing room. "Let me repeat: These employers will not have to pay for or provide contraceptive services, but women who work at these institutions will have access to free contraceptive services just like other women."

How will that work? "If a woman works for an employer that objects to providing contraception because of its religious beliefs, the insurance company will step in and offer birth control free of charge," ABC reports.
It's not clear who will "step in" if the institution self-insures, and in any case this sounds like something of a swindle. Unless insurance companies have access to magical abortifacient trees, somebody has to pay for this stuff. One way or another the benefits will be priced into the cost of insurance, and even if insurers give Catholic institutions a discount and pass the cost on to everybody else, the former will still be purchasing a package of benefits that includes what they find abhorrent.
Will Catholics accept the arrangement? Those who are ideologically committed to ObamaCare, like Carol Keehan of the Catholic Health Association and E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post, fell into line immediately. But the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said only that it was "a first step in the right direction."
Obama's abortifacient shell game reminds us of other work-arounds from religious law, such as Shariah mortgages and the selling of chametz for Passover (see our 2009 discussion for details). But whereas those are accommodations by religious authorities for the convenience of the faithful, the ObamaCare mandate is an imposition by the state. There is no reason for Catholics to accept it unless, like Keehan and Dionne, they are ideologically committed to the vast expansion of state power that is ObamaCare.
Hilarious Corpus
We're probably a bad person, but this is the funniest First Amendment case we can remember:

Troy Schoeller admits he could have chosen his words more carefully when he talked to a reporter about bodies he worked on as an embalmer at a funeral home.

Among a litany of graphic remarks Schoeller made was that he hates embalming fat people. He also described the body of a baby as a "bearskin rug" and made other crude observations about the difficulties of his work.

After his comments were published in The Boston Phoenix, the state board that licenses funeral directors and embalmers revoked his license. Now Schoeller is challenging that punishment before the highest court in Massachusetts, arguing the revocation violates his constitutional right to free speech.

Calling Schoeller's comments "unprofessional," Assistant Attorney General Sookyoung Shin told the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court that "sensitivity, dignity, respect are at the very heart of this profession." The living, beating heart of the profession of temporarily preserving dead bodies.
Shin continued: "If his comments are OK, then any funeral director or embalmer in the state would have license to go out and describe the types of bodies that he finds nasty or that he finds amusing."
We're on Schoeller's side here. If constitutional protection were limited to speech that is "OK," the First Amendment would have as much life as a bearskin rug. No doubt the government has a compelling interest in safeguarding confidential information, like the identities of the decedents Schoeller embalmed, but there's no allegation that he revealed anything of the sort.
"If he's just generally talking about fat people, that's just poor taste," Lisa Carlson, executive director of the Funeral Ethics Organization, tells the AP. "If he worked at my funeral home, I'd fire him for not having good judgment." Surely the industry can police itself--though we suppose if you want to be really safe you'll opt for cremation.
Apophasis: Good for the Jews?
"If a Jew-hater somewhere, inspired perhaps by The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, sought to invent an individual who symbolizes almost all the anti-Semitic clichés that have dogged the Jewish people throughout history, he could hardly come up with a character more perfect than Sheldon Adelson. . . . Nobody has noted--at least not in public--that the agenda in question happens to be the one to which Jews accused of 'dual loyalty' or of being 'Israel-firsters' are alleged to have dedicated themselves."--Eric Alterman, The Nation, Feb. 27 issue
Homer Nods
The issue of Rebel magazine to which we referred in a Jan. 26 item was No. 7, not the premiere as we stated. Also, Rebel publisher Michael Kelley objected to our characterization of his publication as standing for conformity. He's written a lengthy response, linked above, but here's a sample:

As noted in your post, Rebel's About Us page says the following:

Rebel represents our antithetical position on popular culture and the message it has been selling men for generations. Culture says a rebel is a man defined by independence, personal achievement, sexual conquests and/or economic success. Our definition of a Rebel is slightly different. We believe a Rebel is a man of character, defined by humility, dedicated to service and wholly committed to a cause greater than himself. . . .

Is this the language of conformity? Is the act of service, or selfless intent when engaging with others a conformist perspective? Or a call for interdependence, as applied to the greater good, rather than an independent and exploitive pursuit of material gain? Or the idea that respecting a woman should manifest as priority to a sexual encounter? Is this what our culture is telling us? Is our voice conformist or rebellious in light of popular culture today?

The language we quoted was so vague it could describe someone content in a dead-end corporate job. We appreciate the clarification, but even so, calls for "selfless intent," "interdependence" and "respecting a woman" don't seem especially rebellious to us.
The White House press secretary is Jay Carney. An item yesterday (since corrected) erroneously referred to another Carney we know.
Mrs. Biden Is 60. What's the Issue?
"Biden 'Determined' to Work Out Birth Control Issue"--headline, Associated Press, Feb. 9