As productivity rates became more erratic during the early 1970's and dropped, real median family incomes ceased to improve for more than 2 decades, and the incomes of full-time employed male workers began a long term decline. This forced more and more mothers into the workforce away from caring full time for their children as they tried to stem the drop in family standards of living. It was the beginning of a period of lose-lose for parents and their children . There is no evidence that having mother leave the home and her kids , and enter the work-force, helped national productivity or family incomes, compared to the past. In fact, there was an intangible loss by this action - many children were required to substitute day care by others for their own mothers.
Productivity is here defined as GDP per employee.
For proper comparisons it is important to strip-out the impact of the differing economic cycles between nations. These same nations also far out-strip the U.S. in savings growth . Another huge hindrance is lagging education quality performance of the U.S. compared to other nations , as shown in the graphics displayed in the International Education Report and in the International Test Report . Despite spending on new technologies growing rapidly in real terms, it appears overall productivity growth rate has remained stubbornly constant during the economic expansion. Adherents of the new school of thought overlook the fact that technology and globalization will change the structure of the American economy in uneven ways.