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Comment by Symmetry | Hacker News Reader

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."?

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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.

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.

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.

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