Barack Obama and Joseph Biden are both fishing for the women's vote - especially disenchanted Hillary Clinton feminists. Biden has insisted that Republicans, including Sarah Palin, represent a step backwards for women. But when you look at the labor market data from the Census Bureau (as Professor Casey Mulligan of the University of Chicago has in a new study), to figure out "
the amount and reasons for women's progress in the labor market since the 1960s"
something very interesting is revealed.
(Wall Street Journal 9/12/08).
In 1988, the last full year of Republican Ronald Reagan's administration, wage growth for women working full-time throughout the year
improved
by 8.3% from the end of the Democratic administration of Jimmy Carter.
"Johnson, Carter, and Clinton were all Democrats, yet none of them witnessed much labor-market progress for women during their administrations: eight years of Reagan, four years of George H.W. Bush, and six years of George W. Bush."
The Nixon-Ford administrations were the only Republican administrations that didn't make it to this list of forward momentum for women. In the
Quarterly Journal of Economics
, August, 2008, Professor Mulligan and Yona Rubenstein (from Brown University) calculated the statistics that showed women's annual wage growth relative to men's: Under Republican administrations, women's annual wage growth relative to men was .0.87% under George W. Bush, 1.4% under George H.W. Bush, and 1.6% under Ronald Reagon. Under Democratic administrations, women fared less well. Their annual wage growth relative to men was 0.21% under Bill Clinton, 0.04% under Jimmy Carter, and
minus
1% under Lyndon Johnson. I
like
that color lipstick, especially if the kids are grown or Daddy is home with the kidlets.
