Chinese Proverb: "If we do not change our direction, we will end up where we are headed."

CALIFORNIA

Women are doing everything anyone could ever ask another to do in order realize the middleclass promise of the American Dream. Women belong to smaller immediate families than they did a generation ago a generation ago. Women are succeeding as business owners and entrepreneurs. Women are committing fewer crimes than men, and therefore facing fewer criminal consequences, and experiencing lower recidivism rates. And most importantly, women are working and going to school.

Yet, one in three American women, live in poverty or at its brink. If you’ve seen Maria Shriver or the Shriver Report, in the news lately, you’re already familiar with this fact. If you watched the HBO Documentary Film, Paycheck To Paycheck: the Life and Times of Katrina Gilbert, (streaming for free online) you’ve also learned that 28 million children depend on these women for their education, shelter, food, clothing, and overall wellbeing. Ms. Gilbert works in a nursing home. She belongs to a community of caregivers populated by 65.7 million people—one in three Americans. As the head of her household, her three kids count on what she takes home, working as many as eight days in a row, for $9.49 an hour. After the bills get paid, it ain’t much.

We’re used to this kind of narrative. It doesn’t impact us in any way to hear about a young woman who can barely get by. In fact, it often evokes some rather unsettling stereotypes. Sadly, this narrative, these stereotypes, and all accompanying partisan talking points, are as predictable as they are wrong.

In California, everything is supposed to be coming up roses. Our budget is running a nearly $5 billion surplus. We’ve added over 1.23 million new jobs since 2010. And the value of California homes is steadily increasing. Yet, the Golden State boasts the highest rate of impoverished people in the nation. 4 million Californians rely on public assistance from CalFresh, also known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, (SNAP) just to put food on the table. 77% of cash assistance and welfare-to-work services for low-income families (CalWORKS) resources go to meet the needs of children. And despite the state budget surplus, and the fact that 20% of California’s seniors live below the poverty line, regulated programs that allow the elderly, the chronically ill, and the disabled to live outside of costly nursing home facilities, such as in-home support services, (IHSS) are always on the chopping block. Unsurprisingly, nearly 9 out of 10 IHSS caregivers are women.

California Governor Jerry Brown wants to move forward with a 7% cut to IHSS funding, and has proposed capping the amount of hours for which IHSS workers can receive pay. This last move is an effort to avoid extending IHSS caregivers the overtime and Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) protections President Obama just ordered the Department of Labor to extend to homecare providers nationwide. This means, for example, the downgrading and disruption of continuity of care for seniors battling Alzheimer’s and dementia, as well as children and adults managing low-functioning autism. It also means IHSS caregivers, who’ve been living paycheck to paycheck, swimming against the current of income inequality that has eroded and continues to erode the American middleclass, will get pulled into the undertow of poverty and drown.

These proposed cuts and caps do not benefit Cherilyn, the infirm family member she cares for, or her two kids—one of whom remains hospitalized, after being senselessly struck by a stray bullet. They do nothing for Lorijon, the disabled brother she cares for, or her partner, recently diagnosed with cancer. They will not benefit Sheila, who sold her home in Arkansas, and moved her son and husband to a studio apartment in California, so she could care for her mother as her health began to rapidly deteriorate. And they turn Guillermina’s life upside down, as a social worker has determined that she must provide 258-hours’ worth of IHSS care each month to her son with low-functioning autism, and multiple developmental and physiological diagnoses. The proposed cuts and caps would strip away nearly 40% of her income, and Guillermina would be forced to endanger her son’s wellbeing by trusting his care to a stranger, and/or accept a life of squalor.

You see, in California, and across the country, the proverbial rub lies at the intersection of earnings and expenditures: It’s not just that women are paid $.77 for every dollar earned by a man. It’s that women are (a) disproportionately represented in low paying jobs that come without fulltime hours guarantees, sick days, benefits packages, or even steady schedules that allows them to receive pay on a regular basis for all of the hours they’ve actually worked. And (b) forced to stretch their paychecks to cover the needs of their kids, their parents, and in many cases, their partners, as well.

By 2050 there will be 89 million Americans 65 and older. One third will be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s or some other form of dementia. Millions more will have a variety of challenges related to aging and/or adult diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, etc. Before the end of the decade there will be a 70% increase in the demand for homecare. Meanwhile, the millennial unemployment rate that surged during the Great Recession, remains above 16% nationwide.

It doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together.

The costs of higher education are breaking records. And student loan debt is at an all-time high—now exceeding $1 trillion, eclipsing even credit card debt. But so is the demand for caregivers. If millennial job seekers, including college students and recent graduates, were compensated fairly for homecare, then supply would meet demand, and the costs of education, and debt load would become more bearable. There is no reason to believe that caregiving and the other professions disproportionately populated by women will achieve gender balance in the coming years. But there is every reason to believe that increasing the pay of workers in these professions benefits us all. Women, and those they care for, including children and seniors, would escape poverty. Paying them middleclass salaries means their purchases of goods and services, investments in education, and entrepreneurial activities can create new jobs.

Women are doing everything anyone could ever ask another to do in order realize the middleclass promise of the American Dream. Yet whether we are willing to acknowledge it or not, the vast expanse between the 1% and the rest of us, is felt most acutely along gender lines. Two thirds of working women are found in 54 occupations. In order to meet the challenges posed by the costs of childcare, eldercare, and special needs care, and the increases in the costs of housing, higher education, and healthcare, these occupations need to stop paying poverty wages.

To do anything else is to condemn women to live as second class citizens because of their socioeconomic status, and promote the decimation the American Dream until it goes extinct.

NATIONAL

One in three American women, live in poverty or at its brink. If you’ve seen Maria Shriver or the Shriver Report, in the news lately, you’re already familiar with this fact. If you watched the HBO Documentary Film, Paycheck To Paycheck: the Life and Times of Katrina Gilbert, (streaming for free online) you’ve also learned that 28 million children depend on these women for their education, shelter, food, clothing, and overall wellbeing. Ms. Gilbert is the head of her household. Her three kids count on what she takes home, working as many as eight days in a row, for $9.49 an hour. After the bills get paid, it ain’t much.

We’re used to this kind of narrative. It doesn’t impact us in any way to hear about a young woman who can barely provide for her children. In fact, it often evokes some rather unsettling stereotypes about unwed teenage mothers of color, eschewing work in order to collect welfare checks. “Marriage incentives,” have formed part of the GOP’s national platform for generations, and even reemerged as recently as a plank in the most recent presidential election. Republicans have argued that the only way to escape poverty is to amalgamate as many households as possible where mothers and fathers are both present. On the other side of the aisle, Democrats, including President Obama, have argued that high school completion and continuing education represent the only guaranteed pathway out of poverty. Sadly, this narrative, these stereotypes, and all accompanying partisan talking points, are as predictable as they are wrong.

Single motherhood, without marriage, or after divorce, is a mainstream occurrence, not a marginal one. 41% of all American children are born into a household headed by a single mom. The fastest growth in motherhood without marriage, over the course of the last two decades, for instance, has occurred among non-Hispanic, white women, in their twenties, with high school diplomas, and multiple completed college course credits. Concurrently, over the course of the last two decades, teenage birth rates have declined, reaching an all-time record low—a trend true across all demographics, with a 34% decline in Latina teen births, a 24% decline in African American teen births, and a 20% decline in white teen births.

Between the Baby Boom and today, women of all ages, increased their participation in the paid labor pool, and came to consistently comprise half the workforce. In the 1960s twice as many men as women under 30 were college graduates. Today, for every 100 men in college, there are 135 women. And thanks in large part to women’s participation in the labor pool, and women’s continuous academic success, the workforce is more educated than it’s ever been. In 1968, approximately 48% of minimum wage workers completed high school. Today, over 79% hold diplomas or GED certificates. In 1968, only 1 in 6 minimum wage workers had attended or completed college. Today, nearly half have done so.

Again, thanks in large part to women the American workforce is more productive than ever. But you wouldn’t know this by looking at the paychecks women receive. From 1973 to 2011, worker productivity grew 80%, while median hourly compensation, after inflation, grew by just one-eighth that amount. Since 2000, productivity has risen 23% while real hourly pay has stagnated. The federal minimum wage, for instance, remains at $7.25, but it would be $21.72, if it had kept pace with increases in productivity. In over three-fifths of the country a fulltime minimum wage earner makes $15,080 per year. The federal poverty threshold is $15,825 annual income for a single parent with one child. The cost of meeting the basic needs of a family of four is between $42,000 and $64,000 per year.

The ten largest low wage occupations are populated by a majority of women workers: In fact, seven out of the ten occupations paying less than $10 an hour, are populated by two-thirds or more women workers.
72% of cashiers, 85% of housecleaners, 83% of personal care aides, and 95% of homecare workers are women. Women are the majority of retail workers, especially in food service and clothing stores. 67% of minimum wage workers are women. And an increase in the minimum wage to $10 would benefit 17 million women workers. But what’s more, 70% of tipped wage workers are women. Hourly pay for these workers has remained a meager $2.13 for twenty years. Restaurant workers experience poverty at a rate three times higher than the overall workforce. Raising the salary of any of these occupations by $5,000 per year would pull not only a woman worker out of poverty, but
a family of three as well.

With low salaries, and only 24 hours in a day, women are trapped in poverty or at its brink, because of structural obstacles, anachronistic public policy, and an institutionalized bigotry that shortchanges caregivers. 29% of working parents experience childcare breakdowns, resulting in absenteeism, tardiness and reduced concentration. Absenteeism resulting from childcare breakdowns, alone, costs US businesses $3 billion annually. Meanwhile, the cost of childcare has increased eight times faster than the rate of family income growth. In every state, the average cost of center-based infant care is over 25% of the median income for single parents. Yet, while the costs of childcare have risen, the salaries of childcare providers have not. This is, in large part, because 97% of childcare work is done by women.

The eldercare landscape is similar. The average cost of placing an elderly family member in a private nursing home is $94,170 dollars, and is increasing at a rate of 3.6% annually. Whenever possible, homecare represents a much more affordable option, with an average cost that is nearly 70% cheaper, and around one third of the rate of increase. Nevertheless, providing in-home care for someone who is elderly, ill, or disabled, requires a tremendous amount of time. 65.7 million Americans (nearly one in three) devote an average of 19 full days per month to caregiving. These services have $450 billion annual price tag, and the need for them will escalate dramatically, as the number of Americans who are 65 and older will double in a little over a decade, and come to exceed 71.5 million. Yet once again, despite the booming demand for caregivers to assist those managing chronic illness, disability, and/or aging, pay for those who provide care remains inadequate. And I contend that this is, in large part, because 95% of homecare workers are women.

Women are not irresponsibly throwing away educational or professional opportunities in order to raise kids on public assistance programs. Women are half the labor force. Women already own 30 percent of businesses nationwide. A percentage that’s growing, thanks in large part to immigrant women who establish 40% new businesses in their communities. In fact, women have been starting business at rates higher than men for twenty years. Women owned businesses will create over half of the 9.72 million new small business jobs expected to be created by 2018. And the unemployment rate among men is higher than the rate of unemployment among women. Yet women workers still lag behind when it comes to the amount of money they earn and can take home—even women with college degrees continue to earn less than men with college degrees.

Women are doing everything anyone could ever ask another to do in order realize the middleclass promise of the American Dream. Women belong to smaller immediate families than they did a generation ago. Women are succeeding as business owners and entrepreneurs. Women are committing fewer crimes than men, and therefore facing fewer criminal consequences, and experiencing lower recidivism rates. And most importantly, women are working and going to school.

The proverbial rub lies at the intersection of earnings and expenditures: It’s not just that women are paid $.77 for every dollar earned by a man. It’s that women are (a) disproportionately represented in low paying jobs that come without fulltime hours guarantees, sick days, benefits packages, or even steady schedules that allows them to receive pay on a regular basis for all of the hours they’ve actually worked. And (b) forced to stretch their paychecks to cover the needs of their kids, their parents, and in many cases, their partners, as well.

By 2050 there will be 89 million Americans 65 and older 65 and older. One third will be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s or some other form of dementia. Millions more will have a variety of challenges related to aging and/or adult diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, etc. Before the end of the decade there will be a 70% increase in the demand for homecare. Meanwhile, the millennial unemployment rate that surged during the Great Recession, remains above 16% nationwide.

It doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together.

The costs of higher education are breaking records. And student loan debt is at an all-time high—now exceeding $1 trillion, eclipsing even credit card debt. But so is the demand for caregivers. If millennial job seekers, including college students and recent graduates, were compensated fairly for homecare, then supply would meet demand, and the costs of education, and debt load would become more bearable. There is no reason to believe that caregiving and the other professions disproportionately populated by women will achieve gender balance in the coming years. But there is every reason to believe that increasing the pay of workers in these professions benefits us all. Women, and those they care for, including children and seniors, would escape poverty. Paying them middleclass salaries means their purchases of goods and services, investments in education, and entrepreneurial activities can create new jobs.

Women are doing everything anyone could ever ask another to do in order realize the middleclass promise of the American Dream. Yet whether we are willing to acknowledge it or not, the vast expanse between the 1% and the rest of us, is felt most acutely along gender lines. Two thirds of working women are found in 54 occupations. In order to meet the challenges posed by the costs of childcare, eldercare, and special needs care, and the increases in the costs of housing, higher education, and healthcare, these occupations need to stop paying poverty wages.

To do anything else is to condemn women to live as second class citizens because of their socioeconomic status, and promote the decimation the American Dream until it goes extinct.