Sunday, January 27, 2008

Who is anti-women and children

A commenter said I hated women because I pointed out the obvious about women and poverty in my recent post about Clinton and Schwarzenegger's WSJ article on payday loans. Male heads of household have about twice the household income as female heads of household, and the biggest reason isn't the economy, or gender bias, or President Bush. It's the marriage gap. Women who didn't marry the father of their children are a large part of that gap. Divorce, for what ever reason, down the road hurts women economically more, too. You can just about track from the early 1970s the women's movement rise as marriage was denigrated and the corresponding financial slump for children--although I can't actually point to such a graph. I'm sure a pro-life, pro-marriage site has one (and my commenter, a Democrat, would find something wrong with that, too). But if that makes me anti-female, I guess that means the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth hates women too. For sure, it's not impossible for a child to climb out of the mess her parents created, but 56.7% of your life below the poverty line probably isn't fun. Opening more banks so mama can get a "real" loan at a lower percentage rate and a credit card probably isn't going to change a single child's life.

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