Everyday Money

Will Your Mother Live in Poverty?

Documenting the wage gap based on motherhood in many countries, including the United States, the OECD tells the sorry maternal tale in stark numbers.

In the U.S., the wage gap between men and women without children is only seven percent.

Have your first child on American soil, however, and the wage gap rockets to 23%.

Women over 65 today are more than one and a half times more likely to live in poverty than men in the same age bracket.

As the OECD reports, 65% of an American family’s second wage is spent on childcare. For single mothers, of course, that’s 65% of a first wage.

Couple the wage gap, the motherhood penalty, and child care expenses with a 40% single motherhood rate and you get exactly what you’d expect – more than one in five American children living below the poverty line.

In the absence of genuine economic and political power, “women’s” issues will continue to languish unattended (or to be hostility opposed).

Whether your mother will spend her elder years in poverty or your sisters and children will spend theirs in want and diminished opportunity is really up to us, the women.

We women are the ground beneath civilization’s feet and the high heels in which the world dances.

Source: Forbes