From: bhv@areaplg2.corp.mot.com (Bronis Vidugiris)
Subject: Re: Maternity Leave and Child Benefits
Organization: Motorola, CCR&D, CORP, Schaumburg, IL
Date: Tue, 7 Apr 1992 16:32:07 GMT

In article <2APR199219570407@oregon.uoregon.edu> cwinkler@oregon.uoregon.edu (Celia Winkler) writes:

)I've been thinking more of birth rate data--Sweden, e.g., has an extremely low
)birth rate.  There are a lot of differences between Sweden and the U.S., and
)other countries with higher birth rates.  One is the obvious--it is a fairly
)advanced welfare state.  But that might not be causal, at least not 
)directly.  Women in Sweden also have a very high employment rate,
)almost equal to that of men.  (I'm grring because my desk is such a mess
)that I can't find the book that had those stats. )  The median wage of
)women is not equal to that of men, but I would guess that the index of
)dissimilarity is not as great for comparable work classifications in
)Sweden as in, e.g., the US, and that the ratio of men's to women's
)median wages is also closer to 1.0 than in the US or in other countries.

I'm a little skeptical about the high standard of living -> low birthrate
argument myself.  It could be a third factor (such as increased literacy
and/or education) causing both, for example.

I don't have any direct data for pay scale by race and gender, but it would
be interesting to look at.  How much of this is really a "woman's problem"
with wage and wage rates vs a "black problem"?  Farrel says that black
women with young children earn $1.00 for every $.59 white women with young
children earn, for example - but unfortunately this doesn't really
shed that much light on the issues, as some unkown but large part of
this difference probably reflects white women with young children taking
more time to raise them.

)Now, the reason that the welfare state provisions are important is to
)support women's labor, or result from women's participation in the labor
)market.  (This was a stated goal of many of the programs.)
)
)I would agree that AFDC, per se, is a horrid program.  But if we were
)to break it down into programs that treated folks with respect and
)actually had a goal...  E.g. REAL training and education subsidies,
)child care assistance, parental and pregnancy leave (these DO assist
)folks in the labor market), etc.  And if an endless stream of 
)minimum wage, hard labor jobs weren't facing most women (e.g.
)waitressing)...  

A comparison to men in the same position would again be useful.  What
positions are men taking that women aren't?  And (if it can be answered),
why?

)Anyway, it appears likely that the birth rate goes down as women are
)engaged in paid labor that is both remunerative and satisfying.  So,
)it's not just a question of the availability of birth control, although
)that also is quite important, but women's sense of what it is that
)they're supposed to be doing in life.  And ability to do it.

This sounds logical - some women may want a career and children, but at
least some working women may skip children entirely, and others are probably
not going to have really large families (IMO).

Thanks for an interesting post!
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