Elite colleges lower women's wages | Hacker News Reader

Elite colleges lower women's wages

overcomingbias.com

13 pointsyummyfajitas19 comments

Do we have any good theories about mechanisms for this other than "One obvious explanation is that women at more elite colleges married richer classmate men, and so felt less need to earn money themselves."?

Which should also lower men's salaries from elite colleges. But it doesn't.

Do you mean that we'd see men marrying richer classmate women and thus feeling less need to earn money themselves? I don't think our society's typical gender roles tend that way. I think sole breadwinners are usually expected to be men.

Results were a subset among full-time workers, so no sole breadwinners.

A common phenomenon I've observed among richer households in NY is that although both parties work, the man is still the primary breadwinner, i.e. the household finances are completely dependent on his job. (I.e., his pay might be 5-10x hers.)

Typically the woman works in some job she derives utility from (often arts, fashion, teaching or nonprofits) while the man works in finance. Their lifestyle (or even 50% of it) would be completely unsustainable on her salary alone. A rich husband enables her to pursue minimally remunerative work.

So, could be the other way too, but isn't. The study raises the question Why?

Only when men are equally likely as women to stay at home. But they aren't.

Study wasn't stay-at-home, was full-time workers.

Of course there are. Which makes Hanson's next sentence - "Why don’t the study’s authors want us to hear about that?" - surprising. Overcoming Bias, indeed.

Yes, that the studies authors didn't find the same things salient as Hanson did is probably a better explanation than some sort of conscious hiding of results. But what would you say could be good reasons for this very (to me) puzzling data.

I believe that Hanson was remarking on the fact that, although the explanation given is plausible, the authors didn't discuss it in the paper and pooled men and women together afterwards. I don't think he was putting it forward as the only possible explanation.

But Hanson doesn't say "Why don't the study's authors discuss possible explanations for this finding, such as xxx?" Instead, he insinuates that the authors were perfectly aware of this possible explanation, but think that their readers should not be exposed to it for some nefarious reasons (that's what the phrase "why doesn't X want us to hear Y" means colloquially). This sentence leads me to believe that Hanson is coming to this discussion with some biases of his own.

Anyway, other explanations could be that the result is not real (which Hanson does discuss at the end), or that women from these colleges choose lesser-paying careers for some reason other than that they are married to rich men ... perhaps women at elite colleges 25 years ago were unusually interested in charity work. I don't think Hanson's proposed explanation is necessarily wrong, but that phrase "why don't they want us to hear about this?" really rubs me the wrong way.

Obviously this is speculation on my part, but my theory is that women at elite schools are more likely to major in liberal arts fields (English, history, etc...), while those at less elite schools major in more vocational fields (nursing, engineering, etc...).

You'd also need to control for major to mitigate this.

It would also be interesting to see this segmented by employment sector.

Anecdotally, more women than men who graduated from my university in subjects with higher earning potential went on to lower paying careers in the art world and other creative fields.

I'd just like to note that Robin Hanson's blog is generally quite thought provoking. He posts on a variety of topics relating to psychology and economics, often from the viewpoint of status competition and signalling. Really fascinating stuff.

Still a shock to me- although I wouldn't be surprised to hear that all of the exotic, esoteric liberal arts programs offered at elite colleges don't lead to high paying careers.

Yeah, I feel like there must be something else going on. Regardless of the quality of top colleges, you'd think selectivity alone would lead to a higher earning group. Apparently according to the guy's update, the sample controlled for women who left the workforce entirely, so rich doctor hubby from Harvard isn't the answer..

I'd note that people who go to extremely selective colleges and are white (and maybe asian) are almost definitely from a pretty well-off family. The study did notice that black and hispanic people showed a huge income increase, so maybe the people who were already well off felt less of a need to make money, they take some socially beneficial or interesting-to-them job in exchange for less pay.

Another note.. this is on earnings 20 years later, which might make sense for a few reasons but also means that things could have changed in the last 20 years (not that I have a reason to think they have).

Even if you control for leaving the workforce entirely, rich doctor hubby from Harvard could still be the answer in that it frees up idealistic wife from Harvard to work in non-profits or other spiritually rewarding but non-remunerative jobs.

That said, those are just conjectures -- I think it's more interesting that the result was so jarring to them they didn't bother following up with some sort of potential explanation.

And the results seem to change so much from data source to data source and cohort, and just about any other factor that it is clear to me that we really don't have a solid statement.

I wouldn't be at all surprised that they do this with 1995 data and the results are completely different.

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