妻友社区

Imagine that it is March 2020 and you are hearing increased reports about COVID-19鈥檚 U.S. path. Meanwhile, it鈥檚 a Monday鈥攁 workday鈥攁nd you feel ill with symptoms that align with ones reportedly associated with the new virus. You know that if you attend work, you may infect your fellow coworkers with whatever illness you are experiencing, COVID-19 or not. Your ideal course of action is to stay home. However, a whole host of reasons may prevent you from doing so.

Maybe your workplace has a stigma towards those who take a day off, and you decide to attend work in order to avoid coworker judgment. If your work is within the 鈥渃are鈥� sector, you might feel an obligation to those you serve which overrides your wariness surrounding your sickness. Or perhaps you can鈥檛 stay home because missing out on a day of work means missing out on a crucial day of pay or losing your job.

Consistent with this scenario, past studies have shown that access to paid sick leave is an important determinant of an ill person鈥檚 capacity to miss work. If a worker is not guaranteed payment or job security in times of personal or family illness, she may choose to attend work, even if she is running a high fever or caring for a child with a nasty cough. Today, the global pandemic caused by COVID-19 makes clear: As stark as the choice to miss work is for individuals, their choice affects the health of others.

The United States does not offer workers a permanent, federal paid sick leave law which protects their wages and jobs through illnesses. Instead, it is typically the purview of employers to provide their workers with paid time off or sick leave benefits. This employer-focused sick leave scheme leads to disparities in paid sick leave access by industry, occupation, and firm type: A found that workers who earn more and work in 鈥渕anagement, professional and related鈥� occupations, such as accountants, lawyers, and software engineers, are most likely to receive sickness-related income and job protection. Left behind from these job protections are often lower-wage, part-time, and service industry 飞辞谤办别谤蝉鈥攚ho are disproportionately women and women of color.

To promote broader sick leave coverage, some states, counties, and cities have passed mandates which explicitly require employers in their jurisdictions to provide their workers with paid sick leave. At the start of the coronavirus pandemic, 12 of these state-level paid sick leave laws were in effect. In my senior thesis research advised by 妻友社区 College Professor , Ph.D., and in partnership with WCW Senior Research Scientist Sari Kerr, Ph.D., and WCW Research Scientist Deniz 脟ivril, Ph.D., I investigated whether these already-on-the-books state paid sick leave laws led to greater social distancing and reduced COVID-19 infection during the early months of the pandemic鈥檚 U.S. course.

Through my research, I found that people in all states responded to COVID-19 by staying at home more. And in states with paid sick leave mandates, individuals stayed at home to an even greater degree.

I took advantage of a variety of data sources for my project, from cell phone location tracking data sourced from to demographic data from the . Through my research, I found that people in all states responded to COVID-19 by staying at home more. And in states with paid sick leave mandates, individuals stayed at home to an even greater degree.

For example, immediately following President Donald Trump鈥檚 national emergency declaration on March 13, 2020, individuals in states with paid sick leave mandates stayed at home for about 30 more minutes per day relative to people in states not covered by paid sick leave mandates. To put this number into context, 30 additional minutes at home each day is similar to going from typical at-home behavior on a Friday to typical at-home behavior on a Thursday. For a worker in May 2020 earning the median hourly wage, 30 minutes of work raked in approximately $10.

I also found that individuals鈥� ability to stay home during the pandemic was determined by more than their access to state-level paid sick leave. In states covered by paid sick leave mandates, individual characteristics such as educational attainment and ethnicity were associated with differing levels of stay-at-home behavior: Higher shares of college-educated people were associated with more distancing, and higher shares of Hispanic people were associated with less distancing.

By evaluating the effectiveness of paid sick leave mandates in preventing illness spread at the commencement of a global pandemic . . . policymakers can better equip societies with public health tools that successfully prevent devastating human health effects.

There are several possible explanations for these results. College-educated individuals are more likely to be in a higher income bracket and work in jobs that offer paid sick leave. Their jobs may be easily done from home. Thus, as a group, college-educated individuals likely will have an opportunity to stay at home more relative to others, whether or not their state has a sick leave mandate. If high numbers of college-educated individuals live in states that pass paid sick leave, people in these states are more likely to respond to a pandemic by staying home.

Meanwhile, Hispanic people disproportionately make up front-line service jobs. They are also less likely to have access to sick leave through their employers. It appears contradictory that this group did not respond to sick leave coverage within paid sick leave states by distancing more during the pandemic. This result could imply that there exist sustained coverage and effectiveness gaps for paid sick leave mandates passed by states.

Overall, my results offer some evidence that paid sick leave mandates did achieve their intended goals of keeping sick individuals at home, but to a modest degree during the COVID-19 pandemic. Still, the intention of this study is important. By evaluating the effectiveness of paid sick leave mandates in preventing illness spread at the commencement of a global pandemic鈥攁 time when more people are contracting illness and facing the decision of whether or not to stay home from work鈥攑olicymakers can better equip societies with public health tools that successfully prevent devastating human health effects. Even if paid sick leave mandates are not complete antidotes to a public health crisis like COVID-19, they may work well in tandem with other public health protections. Researchers and practitioners should continue to search for optimal policies that ensure that people stay home, tend to their illnesses, take care of loved ones, and limit the future spread of infection.

Tara Wattal graduated from 妻友社区 College in June 2021 with a Bachelor of Arts in Economics. This blog post contains excerpts from her senior honors thesis, which was advised by 妻友社区 College Economics Professor , Ph.D.

As a new mother, you hold your baby in your arms, wishing for the best of the best for her. You may also be facing difficult career questions upon her arrival: When should you start working again? Should you be a stay-at-home-mom? Should you get a new job with a more flexible schedule? Will you be able to get promoted when you鈥檙e back at work? If you have a daughter, will she face the same choices in the future?

When it comes to ensuring that women are able to maintain careers while having children, some progress has been made at the national level, including the Equal Pay Act of 1963 that enforces equal pay for equal work and the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 that requires covered employers to provide employees with unpaid leave for qualified medical and family reasons. However, these laws are not nearly enough to eradicate gender inequality in the workplace or the gender wage gap.

Today is Equal Pay Day, a symbolic occasion that raises awareness about the wage gap. The date represents how far into the year U.S. women must work to earn what men earned in the previous year. This year, Equal Pay Day is August 3 for black women, September 8 for Native American women, and October 21 for Latina women. While many factors contribute to the gender wage gap, two significant factors are the 鈥渟orting problem鈥� 鈥� overrepresentation of women in low-wage industries and occupations 鈥� and gender roles at home.

Despite the fact that in recent years, the percentage of women 25 and older who have at least a bachelor鈥檚 degree is , longstanding gender biases cause women to cluster in certain college majors. Women are still scarce in majors related to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), a gateway to high-paying jobs. Thus, they are automatically 鈥渟orted鈥� into relatively low-paying industries even before starting their careers.

However, even if women follow a career path in a well-paying industry and position, research shows that male and female college grads who start their careers earning similar salaries end up with a substantial gap. Gender roles, especially the fact that women are often primary caregivers for children, are the biggest culprit. Some women choose to be stay-at-home moms, some switch to more flexible or part-time positions, and others just cannot keep up with the demands of their jobs enough to be promoted. Hence, the gap widens.

The economic effects of the COVID-19 crisis have brought out the worst of the consequences of the sorting problem and gender roles. First, industries like hospitality and retail, which are dominated by women, have been hit the hardest. Second, due to the lack of childcare and increased home responsibilities such as homeschooling. Now many are calling this crisis a 鈥渟he-cession,鈥� and .

These effects could have been less severe if policies were in place to fix systemic gender inequalities. The pandemic has revealed the urgency of implementing actionable and effective policies that will set us on a path toward a gender-equitable recovery as well as a gender-equitable future.

For example, we need policies that promote an education system free of gender bias, in which girls are encouraged to pursue careers in STEM fields. We need to invest in affordable child care and flexible work schedules for all. And we need to design optimum paid parental leave policies that help parents to achieve a more manageable work-family balance and improve the labor market outcomes of women as well as the health and wellbeing of both children and mothers, while incentivizing firms to promote equality in the workplace.

At WCW, my research focuses on understanding the impacts of current paid leave laws in the U.S. Unfortunately, the U.S. is the only developed country with no federal paid family leave. However, there are some states with job-protected paid leave laws and some . Research to date on the effects of these laws is limited and based mostly on California data since it was the first state to enact such a law, in 2004. based on California data show that it has a positive impact on employment and wages of new mothers, especially in the short run, while find contradictory evidence in the long run.

Clearly, we need further research. Our research with the Longitudinal Business Database and the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics database, linked to the 2000 Census and American Community Surveys (2005-2017), is more comprehensive than previous studies and will broaden our knowledge to design better policies as it includes New Jersey and Rhode Island data and looks at employee-employer relationships.

It will take time to change social norms and prejudices, and to eliminate gender discrimination that is engraved in our social fabric. But as we pursue research that shows us which policies can help, we advance gender equality, social justice, and human wellbeing. Equal Pay Day reminds us that we must keep fighting this fight, in order to create a better future for our children.

Deniz 脟ivril, Ph.D., is a research scientist at the 妻友社区 at 妻友社区 College and Special-Sworn-Status researcher at the U.S. Census Bureau. Her research interests center on labor economics, international trade, and corporate finance. Her current projects at WCW focus on women in the workplace.

I spent the past semester working with Professor Sari Kerr as a research intern, and greatly enjoyed the experience. Our weekly Zoom meetings were welcomed as constant reminders of my connection to 妻友社区, despite studying off campus. My work with her focused on the role of entrepreneurship and how it affects social mobility of low-income women and their children.

I began with a literature review which showed that those with self-employed parents are more likely to be entrepreneurs themselves. However, this entrepreneurial spirit that is passed down often appears in surprising ways. While many people envision entrepreneurship being passed down through family-owned businesses, I found that it was typically through 鈥渒nowledge spillovers鈥� such as social capital like personal connections and/or the knowledge of running a business. In other words, many parents are passing on to their children information about how to be an entrepreneur, not necessarily a specific business or the ability to be a successful entrepreneur.

After finding that there were these differences, I began working with another research assistant, Shirley Wu, to analyze a data set from Michigan鈥檚 Institute for Social Research, . I鈥檓 very thankful to have been able to work with Shirley as well, not only because she helped put together and organize the data set, but because having another person to work with helped build a truly collaborative atmosphere. Using a statistical software program called Stata, we were able to run initial analytics to understand the general distribution of individuals within the data set and create mobility matrices that displayed movement between parental and child incomes. This allowed us to see preliminary differences in generational mobility between entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs.

It has been very interesting to do this research while watching the economic impact of COVID-19 on small businesses unfold. A that I read during the literature review noted that women have lower rates of entry into and higher rates of exit from entrepreneurship. During a time when so many small businesses are hurting, I am reminded that women entrepreneurs are disproportionately negatively impacted and that we will likely see a lower number return to entrepreneurship in the future. As this research continues, we hope to contribute to the literature focusing on the unique experience that low-income women entrepreneurs face in running successful businesses.

I鈥檓 very grateful to have this opportunity to do research as a student. I still remember talking to Professor Kerr about research opportunities during one of her office hours, and I鈥檓 so glad we got to work together. This experience has given me confidence in my own ability to conduct research and confirmed my interest in pursuing similar work after graduation.

Jessica Wu is a member of the class of 2021 who is majoring in Economics and Psychology. She was awarded the Linda Coyne Lloyd Student Research Internship at the 妻友社区.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office. Photo courtesy of iStock.com/Andrei StanescuLast week, President Trump for foreigners seeking employment in the United States. This ban 鈥� which affects those from computer programmers to seasonal workers in the hospitality industry 鈥� will last at least until the end of 2020 and, when combined with extended restrictions on the issuance of new green cards, will keep as many as half a million people out of the U.S.

My research has shown that immigrants make significant contributions to the U.S. economy, particularly as business founders and job creators. As I recently wrote for the Center for Growth and Opportunity鈥檚 , they will play a critical role in pandemic economic recovery, and keeping foreign workers out of the U.S. right now will be detrimental to those efforts.

In the last two decades, the share of immigrant entrepreneurs in the U.S. has increased, along with the shares of Latino and Black business owners, and those of Mexican, Chinese, and Indian descent. (As I testified before Congress a year ago, while immigrants make up about 13 percent of the U.S. population, they are founders of 26 percent of new businesses, and they are more likely than those born in the U.S. to be entrepreneurs.) The creation of new companies and new jobs is much more dependent on these diverse entrepreneurs than it was in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Immigrant entrepreneurs alone create roughly one in four of all jobs among young companies, and 40 percent or more in places such as Silicon Valley, New York City, and other tech hubs. Young companies are responsible for a disproportionate number of newly created jobs, so ensuring the viability of already existing young companies is critical if we want them to continue their role as job creation engines.

Many immigrant-founded firms rely heavily on being able to hire immigrant workers 鈥� either skilled workers through the H-1B visa program, or seasonal workers through various other programs. Some of these workers return home after a period of time; some end up staying and getting their green cards, and some of those eventually start their own businesses. No matter how long they stay in the U.S., they are an important source of labor in our economy.

So not letting these workers enter the U.S. at a time when small businesses have been particularly hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic will make recovery that much more difficult. Companies founded by immigrants make up a huge part of our economy and create jobs for Americans and immigrants alike. Preventing them from being able to get their businesses back up and running will hurt us all in the long run.

Sari Pekkala Kerr, Ph.D., is a senior research scientist and economist at the 妻友社区. Her studies and teaching focus on the economics of labor markets, education, and families.

A woman graduates from college and starts her first job, earning about the same as the male colleague who sits next to her. She gets promoted a few times, her salary increases, and in her late 20s, she gets married. Her husband gets a job offer in a new city, they move, and she takes a slightly lower-paying job. In her early 30s, she has a baby, and then another baby in her mid-30s. She decides to cut back her hours (and thus her pay) in order to spend more time with her children. My research shows that this is the point in women鈥檚 lives at which the gender pay gap widens.

Fast-forward 15 years: the woman鈥檚 children are growing up and will soon be headed off to college, and she is eager to ramp her career back up. What happens to the gender pay gap now?

Today is Equal Pay Day, a day that symbolizes how far into the year the average woman in the U.S. must work in order to earn what the average man in the U.S. earned the previous year. Equal Pay Day for black women is August 13, for Native American women it鈥檚 October 1, and for Latina women it鈥檚 October 29. Women on average earn $0.82 for each dollar earned by a man; black women earn $0.62, Native American women earn $0.57, and Latina women earn $0.54. The gender pay gap has slowly narrowed over time, but over the past 15 years. Globally, the gap isn鈥檛 expected to close .

But we are learning that the story of the gender pay gap is a complex one. We now know that male and female college grads start their careers earning nearly the same salaries, but . By the time college grads reach their peak earnings, . Less than a third of this gap is caused by differences between the jobs in which men and women work, though women are certainly such as teaching, nursing, and social work 鈥� the usual 鈥減ink-collar鈥� jobs. Much of the widening of the gap comes from married women: their earnings grow much more slowly with age and they see little benefit from job-hopping compared with men and unmarried women. And when women become mothers, they are more likely to than men, even in full-time work.

This paints a bit of a dire picture. Things begin to turn around for women, though, once they reach their late 40s and 50s: the pay gap begins to narrow again. For example, among more recent generations of college-educated women, the they reach their late 50s. This happens as women increase their work effort relative to men once their children leave home.

There are still more questions to be answered before we can fully understand the causes of the gender pay gap, and how policies might help close it. For example, how much of the gap is contributed by dual-career considerations, where a family has to optimize around the primary breadwinner? Can public policies help to better share the burden among working spouses? An improved understanding might help us determine whether policies such as father quotas in parental leave might be part of a solution.

We are slowly gaining a clearer picture of how the gender pay gap evolves over the course of our lives. As our research continues, this picture continues to come into focus.

Sari Pekkala Kerr, Ph.D., is a senior research scientist and economist at the 妻友社区. Her studies and teaching focus on the economics of labor markets, education, and families.

In January 2018, President Trump famously raised his concerns regarding the 鈥渓ack of Norwegians鈥� and the excess of immigrants from low-income countries entering the United States 鈥� and . The concern over the composition of U.S. immigration flow is not at all new, however. Leading immigration economist George Borjas, Ph.D., has pointed out in several academic articles that the relative share of immigrants from Europe steadily declined over the 20^th century, as more immigrants started to arrive from Central and South America, and Asia (Borjas, 1995 and 1999).[1] Borjas argued that in the 1980鈥檚 and 1990鈥檚 the weakening labor market performance of immigrants (as compared to U.S. natives) was directly related to the changing source country composition. More recently, low skilled immigration into the U.S. has drastically declined, as explained by Hanson, Liu, and McIntosh (2017).[2] Should the U.S. be very concerned about the composition of its immigrant pool as Trump rather bluntly argued? And would that give rise to a drastic change in the U.S. immigration policy? Let鈥檚 examine the data.

We took a look at the to evaluate those questions. To avoid arbitrarily categorizing source countries into 鈥渁s good as Norway鈥� versus 鈥渢errible, horrible, no good, very bad countries鈥� we use the World Bank country classification based on the Gross National Income (GNI) per capita and OECD membership. Countries are grouped into low income (e.g. Afghanistan, Haiti, and Somalia), lower middle-income (e.g. Armenia, El Salvador, and India), upper middle-income (e.g. Cuba, Mexico, and China), high-income OECD (e.g. Chile, Norway, and Canada), and high-income non-OECD (e.g. The Bahamas, Saudi Arabia, and Russia). Since Mexico, China, and India currently constitute the vast majority of U.S.-bound immigrants in their respective groups, we look at those countries separately. Also, as we are interested in studying the labor market performance of immigrants relative to U.S. natives, we include individuals aged 18-65 in the descriptive analyses below.

First, worries regarding the huge influx of migrants from low-income countries do not seem warranted: the share of immigrant from low-income countries (as percentage of the total immigrant stock residing in the U.S.) is rather small (around three percent) and has remained steady over the period 2001-2017, both among the recent arrivals and the broader immigrant population. On the other hand, there is a definite downward trend in the share of immigrants who originate from high-income OECD countries, as well as a similar downward trend for Mexicans, with the latter being particularly prominent among recent arrivals. There is a corresponding increase in the number of migrants from lower- and upper middle-income countries, especially from India and China.

So then, are immigrants from low-income countries poorly educated and not succeeding in the U.S. labor market? Perhaps surprisingly, origin country income and the average education level of the immigrant group are not as highly correlated as one might think. Immigrants from Mexico, high-income non-OECD countries, and low-income countries are less likely to have a college degree than similarly aged U.S. natives, whereas those from China, India, and high-income OECD-countries are the most educated. The latter is largely explained by the where a college degree is a minimum requirement for entry into the U.S. Educational attainment is gradually increasing among all groups, including U.S. natives. looks at immigrant niching into specific low-skill and high-skill labor markets (Eckstein and Peri, 2018).[3] The niching is very much related to the type of skills and human capital of the immigrant group. For example, almost one-in-four Indian immigrants works in a computing related job, whereas Mexican immigrants are heavily clustered in low-skilled manual jobs (e.g. laborers in construction, farm workers, cooks, and janitors).

Most analysts of immigrants in host country labor markets are concerned with their 鈥渁ssimilation鈥� 鈥� how easily they are able to find employment and what their relative wage levels look like as compared to natives. We know that since the Great Recession, most immigrants are at least as likely to be employed as the average American native. The only exceptions are those from high-income non-OECD countries, whose employment rates are much lower. Conditional on being employed, immigrants are also more likely to work full time (30 hours or more per week) than employed natives, with the exception of  high-income non-OECD country immigrants in the post-recession years, as well as Chinese immigrants in the last few years of the data.[4].

While immigrants seem to find employment, most of them are not earning wages as high as the average American. There are many likely reasons for the immigrant-native pay gap, including language skills, under-employment relative to education, occupation and sector differences, and so on. Whether looking at the annual earnings, weekly wages, or hourly wage, the relative pay is low especially for those from Mexico and low-income countries. Even if we account for the immigrant 鈥� native differences in education, occupations, geographic locations, and other reasons that explain the pay gap, we still see all immigrant groups except for those from high-income OECD countries earning less than comparable natives.  

Additionally, many studies have looked at the immigrant 鈥� native wage gap in detail and find that the gap shrinks over duration of stay.[5] Immigrants in the U.S. also seem to in the labor market than in most other countries.[6] Many more studies have tried to find impacts that immigrants may have on native employment and wages. Generally those impacts are very small or localized to specific groups.[7] Instead, immigrants are found to be an important economic force as firm founders, job creators, and innovators.[8] Taking the various facts into account, it would be hard to claim that immigrants in the U.S. are a 鈥渘et negative鈥� for the economy.

So are President Trump鈥檚 concerns regarding our immigrant pool valid, at least as far some real data and evidence can attest? We would argue that immigrants seem to fare relatively well in the U.S. labor market, and the changing source country composition is perhaps not much of a cause for concern. It remains, of course, important to ensure that immigrants can assimilate into the U.S. labor market, without any , as that guarantees the greatest positive net impact on the host country.

Sari Pekkala Kerr, Ph.D., is a senior research scientist/economist at the at who studies labor markets, education, and families. is a research associate at the and a former research assistant at the 妻友社区.

[1] Borjas, George. 鈥淗eaven鈥檚 Door.鈥� Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999. Borjas, George. 鈥淎ssimilation and Changes in Cohort Quality Revisited: What Happened to Immigrant Earnings in the 1980s? Journal of Labor Economics 13 (1995): 201-245.

[2] Hanson, Gordon, Chen Liu, and Craig McIntosh. 鈥淎long the watchtower: The rise and fall of U.S. low-skilled immigration.鈥� Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, BPEA Conference Drafts, March 2017.

[3] Susan Eckstein and Giovanni Peri. 鈥淚mmigrant Niches and Immigrant Networks in the U.S. Labor Market.鈥� RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 4 (2018): 1鈥�17.

[4] Due to the very large sample sizes in the ACS, most differences that appear small in the graphs are nevertheless statistically significant under standard t-tests for sample means.

[5] E.g. LaLonde and Topel. 鈥淎ssimilation of Immigrants in the U.S. Labor Market.鈥� In Borjas and Freeman (Eds.) Immigration and the Work Force. The University of Chicago Press (1992); Lubotsky. 鈥淐hutes or Ladders? A Longitudinal Analysis of Immigrant Earnings.鈥� Journal of Political Economy 115 (2007): 820鈥�867.

[6] E.g. OECD (2015) 鈥淚ndicators of Immigrant Integration.鈥� OECD, Paris.

[7] E.g. Kerr and Kerr. 鈥淓conomic Impacts of Immigration: A Survey.鈥� Finnish Economic Papers 24 (2011): 1-32; Ottaviano and Peri. 鈥淩ethinking the Effect of Immigration on Wages.鈥� Journal of the European Economic Association 10 (2012): 152鈥�197; Borjas and Doran. "The Collapse of the Soviet Union and the Productivity of American Mathematicians." Quarterly Journal of Economics 127 (2012): 1143-1203.

[8] E.g. Kerr and Kerr. 鈥淚mmigrant Entrepreneurship in America: Evidence from the Survey of Business Owners 2007 & 2012.鈥� NBER Working Paper 24494, 2018; Kerr. 鈥淕ift of Global Talent: How Migration Shapes Business, Economy, and Society.鈥� Stanford University Press, 2018.

We are in a fresh feminist moment, highlighted thanks to . Hang with me while I explain.

It is obviously ridiculous that the payout to the U.S. Women鈥檚 Soccer team for the World Cup victory is $2 million; the German men got $35 million last year. The $2 million is almost cute, considering it鈥檚 the same amount as for his vote to make Qatar the 2022 World Cup site.

For a long time money has measured worth. I鈥檓 sure Warner, , and others could prattle on about why women don鈥檛 deserve a big payday: women鈥檚 sports are not big time. When you consider low ticket prices, turf fields (rather than grass), shabby player treatment (competitors stuffed into the same hotels and practice venues), it hardly looks like the big-money (men鈥檚) World Cup event of July 2014.

For years, FIFA has treated the Women鈥檚 World Cup as an afterthought. When the U.S. women last won, in 1999, there was so little publicity that people only found out because Brandi Chastain whipped off her jersey, spurring debate about whether it was appropriate to show a sports bra in public.

Things are changing. The fashion forward will note that bras have officially become shirts (now they鈥檙e called 鈥渂ralettes.鈥�). The Women鈥檚 World Cup final became most watched televised soccer game in U.S. history. Commemorative t-shirts are selling out online. Carli Lloyd could earn $2 million (that number again!) just in commercial deals following her in the first few minutes of the game, the fastest ever in World Cup history.

Suddenly, rather than looking powerful, FIFA looks dumb and stale. For guys with a nose for cash, they are leaving a lot of it on the table. (You can鈥檛 watch a replay of Lloyd鈥檚 half-field goal online without viewing a commercial first.)

There is a big problem with the economics of how women are paid in sports (and elsewhere), which FIFA is helping to make obvious. I don鈥檛 want to say that money doesn鈥檛 matter (it does), but the U.S. women are playing out their power in a fresh feminist image that is a celebration of female skill and dominance. The effect is to make low wages look absurd. In much the same way that women have quietly come to own college campuses and advanced degrees, female athletes are demonstrating their clear-headed brilliance.

This isn鈥檛 about anger. It鈥檚 about proficiency鈥攐n the field and off. The U.S. Women鈥檚 World Cup win comes at a moment when . It comes as muscular Serena Williams is proving to be so dominant that I caught ESPN talking heads debating the other day if she might be the . Who was it? LeBron, Michael, or Serena?

We have reached this moment through an interesting d茅tente between old-time feminists and young women. We have don鈥檛 have to choose between sport girl or girly-girl: I saw an eight-year-old at a men鈥檚 soccer game wearing a party dress鈥攁nd cleats. This new feminism is about pink and sparkles and mettle, all at the same time. It is Serena tough. U.S. women driven. Amy Schumer sarcastic. And Taylor Swift nice.

Pop star Swift, like the U.S. women鈥檚 soccer team, has amassed a base of girl fans and built an empire by reaching out and preaching friendship, self-respect, and girl-to-girl support. She has embraced stuff that is sweet: cats and cookie baking. But don鈥檛 be fooled. She was the one who by threatening to withhold her album 1989 from iTunes (Apple fussed, then caved). That is power.

So when Swift invited the Women鈥檚 World Cup team to the stage before 60,000 fans during her concert at MetLife stadium following the team鈥檚 ticker tape parade in New York City, it was a visual demonstration of the new feminist might. It was women reaching out to one another and recognizing that success in one venue amplifies value in another. The bedazzled love鈥攁nd support鈥攕uits them both. Blatter once famously said that the only way to get people interested in women鈥檚 soccer was for the players to don very short shorts. Now, he鈥攁nd FIFA鈥攋ust look out of touch.

is writer-in-residence at 妻友社区, a journalist who frequently contributes to the New York Times, and author of several books including >

April 2016 Update: The wage gap cited has improved by 1% point since this article was originally posted in April 2015.

What is a woman worth? On Tuesday, April 14, 2015, we celebrate Equal Pay Day, a day to acknowledge the continuing gap in wages between women and men. By now, we are all familiar with the statistics 鈥� women employed full-time, year-round earn only . While some of this gap is attributable to differences in worker鈥檚 education, training or experience, about 40% of the pay gap can be attributed to discrimination.

What does this familiar narrative mean for individual women? Let鈥檚 start with STEM (science, technology, engineering and math). While girls have closed the gap with boys in high school , women are losing ground in . While Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, recommends , Gamergate reminded us of the challenges and open hostility that women can .

Over one-third of women are employed in the health and education fields; four of the top 20 occupations for women in are --elementary and middle school teachers, secondary school teachers, registered nurses, and nursing and psychiatric aides. Even in these heavily female occupations, men outearn women. For example, 鈥渕ales in nursing females by nearly $7,700 per year in outpatient settings and nearly $3,900 in hospitals.鈥�

Service occupations, such as maids and housekeeping cleaners, personal care aides and child care workers, are the lowest paid of all broad occupational categories. This disproportionately affects the earnings of ; while 16% of all women work in service occupations, 24% of Black women, and 27% of Latinas, are employed in service occupations.

How do we fix this? There are a few proposals on the table right now that would go a long way to address this gap. First, raising the would affect women who are disproportionately employed in low-wage occupations. Second, ensuring equal pay for work of equal value, and putting teeth into the , would reduce wage discrimination [link ]. Third, providing paid parental leave for all workers would make it possible for mothers with young children to stay competitive in the labor force, and for parents to participate equally in raising their families. Wouldn鈥檛 it be great if we never needed to celebrate Equal Pay Day again?

Nancy Marshall, Ed.D. is an Associate Director and Senior Research Scientist at the (WCW) at . She leads the Work, Families and Children Team at WCW and is an Adjunct Associate Professor at 妻友社区 College.

April 2016 Update: The wage gap cited has improved by 1% point since this article was originally posted in April 2015.

Did those female gym teachers back in the early 1900s actually have it right? No one wants to return to bloomers and half-court basketball, but the coalition of female physical educators who ran women鈥檚 sports and fought takeover by the NCAA (which took control of women鈥檚 college athletics in 1980) were onto something. Their message--that sport should be about self-development, social skills, and fair play--sounds pretty great right now.

They found competition unseemly (that's a problem), but their broad recognition of college sport as a life and community-building pursuit is worth a reprise given the mess that has become the NCAA-led college sports world.

Right now we鈥檙e in the midst of soul-searching about what college sports should look like. A spate of lawsuits ask about the 鈥渟tudent鈥� status of student-athletes and whether they should be paid. Last month, the five wealthiest conferences--Atlantic Coast, Big Ten, Big 12, Pacific-12, and Southeastern--began from many NCAA rules, gaining leeway to give more money to players. Where will this go? Will more universities develop athletes instead of scholars? (Some already do.) Will only marquis players get extra money? Will non-revenue-producing sports look expendable in a more commercialized environment?

The recently polled DI college leaders on their interest in exploring alternative models for competition and administration for some sports. Ambivalence won: 43 percent of respondents were interested; 37 percent weren鈥檛. There鈥檚 a lot to figure out--and little consensus on where to go.

The college sports debate, let鈥檚 be clear, is a male conversation. It is ruled by big-time sports--football and men鈥檚 basketball--and the economic disruption they have created in the academic system. This is about competition and money. No wonder Cardale Jones, the third-string quarterback who just led Ohio State to the inaugural National Championship, was confused when he arrived on campus. His : 鈥淲hy should we have to go to class if we came here to play FOOTBALL, we ain鈥檛 come to play SCHOOL, classes are POINTLESS.鈥�

If Cardale did not come to 鈥減lay SCHOOL,鈥� why should Ohio State--or any big time program--be other than a semi-pro team? While we鈥檙e here, what role should college football--with it's concussion and brain damage record--even have in higher education? The conflicts are moral, but dollars will rule.

The gym teachers saw athletics as integral to school; the problem today is precisely that they are not. High-powered programs with big revenues (most lose money, but a handful make a bundle) operate as independent commercial enterprises. The wealthy programs pay coaches what their peers in the NFL and the NBA earn. (Sometimes more!) Cardale Jones does have a point: He was brought to play football and bring money and success to the program. You can鈥檛 blame players for wanting to be paid. But is this the point of college sports?

As we celebrate , we typically cite participation statistics and recognize how far women have come. But we ought to value the ideological roots of women鈥檚 athletics, not as a shameful past of milk-and-cookies patsy play (though it was some of that), but for the wisdom of recognizing the hornet鈥檚 nest of unbridled high-stakes competition on what should be the virtues of athletics play in a college environment. The athletic field offers lessons in teamwork, leadership, persistence, skill-development, problem solving.

A study I did with colleagues Allison Tracy, Ph.D. and Sumru Erkut, Ph.D. showed that this message is getting lost. We gave 828 college recruiters a detailed survey to explore how they valued varsity sports experience in judging candidates for entry-level corporate jobs. They saw the obvious--college athletes excelled at teamwork, which they considered a key trait--but did not recognize skills such as time management and organization required to play college sports. Interestingly, they did not rate male or female athletes differently.

Anyone who has called herself an athlete recognizes the personal benefits of sport. Money has become a spoiler in the conversation (heck, --far from it). It鈥檚 time to see that the payoff of college sports can come without ESPN 鈥淕ame Day,鈥� academically questionable athletes, or coaches paid far more than the university president.

Find that value on women's teams, in locker rooms, and at games that garner little attention, but build durable skills. Sure it鈥檚 embarrassing to recall a beauty 鈥淨ueen of the Court鈥� crowned at halftime or college contests that mixed opposing players to limit competition and hard feelings. But maybe the men steering the future of college sports should consider the great goods that women and girls have been bringing to the games they play--for years.

Laura Pappano is the writer-in-residence at the at and an experienced journalist who writes about education and gender equity issues in sports.

Recently, NPR, with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Harvard School of Public Health, released that found that one-quarter of Americans reported that they had experienced significant amounts of stress in the previous month. That level of stress is similar to levels found in earlier polls. But is this much stress making us sick? The poll found that 70% of people experiencing high levels of stress reported that they were --not getting enough sleep can negatively affect health. Other research tells us even more about the possible health consequences of too much stress and our capacity to cope with it. One of the top three sources of stress in the NPR poll, for individuals reporting high levels of stress, was stress from work problems. We know that jobs that are very stressful, with too much to do, can contribute to health problems, but only when those demands or challenges are not offset by the resources and authority to make decisions about the work. In fact, jobs that are very challenging--and in which workers have the authority and resources they need--are good for our health. The are those with heavy demands that you can鈥檛 address or that never end--or those jobs that have no challenge whatsoever, that involve repetitive or boring work, with no say over what work gets done when. Not surprisingly, in the NPR poll, people in lower-paid jobs, with annual incomes under $20,000, reported more stress from work problems than did those with incomes of $50,000 or more (64% of low-income individuals reported work stress, compared to 57% of higher income people).

Another factor in whether stress makes us sick is whether the stress is chronic or from a single event. Certain life events are very stressful, such as the death of a loved one or divorce; one-in-six people reported that the most stressful event in the previous year was the death of a loved one, and fewer than one-in-ten reported a life change or transition, such as divorce, was the most stressful event. However, ongoing stressful conditions, such as chronic health problems, being a single parent following divorce, or poverty, are more likely to wear away at our health and wellbeing. The NPR poll found that individuals with a chronic illness were more likely to report high stress in the previous month (36% compared to 26% overall), as were individuals living in poverty (36%) and single parents (35%). These chronic stressors tax our abilities to cope with stress. For those individuals with high levels of stress, problems with finances was one of the main sources of stress, and this was especially true for those (70% reported financial stress), those with disabilities (64%) or in poor health (69%), and for women (58%, compared to 45% for men). Chronic stress can lead to wear and tear or allostatic load, which can suppress immune function and lead to .

The other major contributor to stress, according to the poll, was having too many responsibilities overall. While this can mean different things to different people, it鈥檚 interesting to note that women were more likely than men to say that this was one of the reasons they were so stressed in the previous month. One life situation that can give us that overload feeling is combining employment with raising a family. While many men and women find that combination to be beneficial 鈥� would you give up your family or choose to stop working? 鈥� there are circumstances when the combination can be a negative. Women and men can experience strain from the stresses of too much to do at work and at home. However, because women tend to spend more time in family labor than do men, women with young children and not enough support or resources at work or at home are particularly at risk.

Poverty, bad jobs, too many responsibilities鈥� these can all contribute to poorer health; these stressors are not randomly experienced by everyone, but rather fall more heavily on those with less advantage and opportunity in their lives. In a 2010 on stress and health, Peggy Thoits argued that the greater exposure of members of less-advantaged groups (women, race-ethnic minorities, lower-income and working class individuals) to chronic or high stress was one of the reasons that we find poorer health among women, race-ethnic minorities, lower-income and working class individuals. There are many possible responses to this reality, but central to that must be recognizing the health consequences of high levels of stress and addressing some of the underlying stressors, such as inequality and injustice.

Nancy Marshall, Ed.D. is an Associate Director and Senior Research Scientist at the (WCW) at . She leads the Work, Families and Children Team at WCW and is an Adjunct Associate Professor at 妻友社区 College.

The controversy surrounding lack of of directors as it is going public with an IPO, has rekindled interest in diversity on corporate boards. In research conducted at the 妻友社区, my colleagues Vicki Kramer, Alison Konrad and I showed that having a critical mass of three or more women improves board governance. Catalyst (2007) and McKinsey (2012) subsequently reported that companies with diverse executive boards enjoyed significantly higher earnings and returns on equity. When there is a business case to be made for greater diversity on boards, the usual excuse is that there are too few qualified women, buttressed by the small number of female CEOs. But let鈥檚 look at the facts: not all male board members are CEOs. A board needs diversity in professional expertise as well as gender, race, and nationality. People making excuses for high tech companies鈥� lack of female board members point to the small numbers of women majoring in computer science. Again, not all male board members of high tech companies have technology backgrounds. In fact, most members of Twitter鈥檚 board members have undergraduate degrees from liberal arts colleges: one has a degree in English; another in Asian Studies. Couldn鈥檛 female experts in entrepreneurial management, intellectual property law, investment management contribute, for example, contribute positively within such a governance structure? It was smart of Twitter to include diversity of educational and work experiences on its board. Twitter (and all corporations) needs to stop making excuses and go for greater diversity, by including female, minority, and international members on its board.

Sumru Erkut, Ph.D. is an associate director and senior research scientist at the at where she studies women's leadership and co-led the Critical Mass on Corporate Boards study.

Social Scientific Perspectives on Making Change in America

Yesterday I attended the 50^th Anniversary of the March on Washington with two members of the WCW staff. We had been in Washington, D.C., for a series of meetings--indeed, we had just met with a liaison to the earlier that morning--and we wanted to be a part of this history. The fact that my own had been a civil rights activist in the early 1960s was part of my inspiration to attend this event and share in the national moment on reflection on how far we had or hadn鈥檛 come in terms of meeting the deeply enshrined American ideals of equality and justice.

During the flight home, as I reviewed the day鈥檚 by three U.S. Presidents-- Carter, Clinton, and Obama--vis-脿-vis the poignantly articulated and enduring of Martin Luther King, Jr., I began to think about a social science perspective on progress towards our shared civil and human rights goals. Of course there are political and philosophical ways to think about achieving equality and justice, but how does the achievement of these ends look through lenses of psychology, sociology, education, or economics, for example?

The work we do at is geared towards social change, yet our methods revolve around empirical social science research. Research not only informs action here, but it also allows us to evaluate the effectiveness of action using evidence. As I mentioned in one of our D.C. meetings, WCW is a kind of 鈥渆vidence factory鈥�--we are in the business of generating the kind of evidence that shapes effective policy and sound action programs. And it is no accident that, these days, everybody from activists and advocacy groups to philanthropists and Federal funders are seeking evidence that the actions they engage or invest in actually make a difference. Social-change oriented research organizations like WCW are key players in this equation.

Tomorrow, I will post a blog that takes a deeper look at some of the ways that social science research--including work by WCW scholars--informs social justice questions. Over time, I鈥檇 like to enlarge this dialogue about the role of research in social change, and I hope you鈥檒l join me by adding your comments and reposting our blogs on your social media channels. By staying in conversation and creating a buzz, together we move the needle on the issues we all care about!

Layli Maparyan, Ph.D. is the Executive Director of the 妻友社区 at .

This commentary appears in the Research & Action Report, Spring/Summer 2013 Volume 34 鈥� Number 2 (forthcoming), published by the 妻友社区.

When we think about employment and health, we often think about high risk jobs and occupational safety. The recent deaths of first responders in Massachusetts and Texas highlight these serious concerns. However, many workers are exposed to unhealthy conditions that, while not lethal, seriously affect their health.

of downsizing, job instability, increased workload and longer hours have led to rising concerns about the health consequences of occupational stress. While both men and women experience stress-related illnesses, women are twice as likely as men to suffer from these consequences due to unhealthy working conditions. Jobs with heavy demands and little latitude in managing or meeting demands are particularly stressful, and women of all races, as well as men of color, are more likely to work in jobs with this combination.

While is quite similar to men鈥檚, the occupations and environments vary greatly. In 2009, 44.6 percent of women worked in just 20 occupations, and most of these occupations were heavily female, such as nurses, teachers, maids and housekeeping cleaners, health aides, and clerks鈥攎ost of which have higher emotional demands. We need to ensure that researchers are examining the effects of emotional work so that employers can identify and implement ways to reduce the stress of these emotionally demanding jobs. In addition, women in the health and education field experience more nonfatal occupational injuries than would be expected in the general workforce; typical injuries include low-back pain, asthma, and exposure to infectious, biological, or chemical hazards.

How can employers and policymakers protect women鈥檚 health?

Women need the same protections that men do鈥攕tandards for workplace health and safety, regular inspections and monitoring of injury rates, and research to develop health and safety practices. However, all too often, women, and women鈥檚 occupations and health concerns, have been left out of the funding priorities for research and innovative practices.

But other workplace factors have negative health implications for women employees, too. For example, as women are so concentrated in a select set of occupations, this results in some workplaces where women are not well represented and where they may be less empowered. Research shows that these women are more likely to experience 鈥攏early one-quarter of women report having experienced sexual harassment and 58 percent have experienced potentially harassing behaviors at work. We know that sexual harassment affects psychological well-being and increases psychological distress. Since we know that women are at greater risk for sexual harassment, especially in workplaces that have a climate in which workers believe that reports of harassment will not be taken seriously or will not have consequences for the harasser, it鈥檚 essential that employers implement and enforce policies that create a climate that promotes equity and respect and does not tolerate sexual harassment.

Additionally, . Their responsibility to care for young children or aging parents does not end when they enter the workplace. However, despite the increasing involvement of men in caregiving, women still bear a greater burden. For example, married mothers take on almost twice the hours of married fathers each week to address family and home responsibilities. Caregiving for children and aging parents also falls more heavily on women鈥檚 shoulders.

How does this affect women鈥檚 employment and their health?

Work and family balance issues are a health risk for women with children... Read more of Marshall's commentary>>

Nancy Marshall, Ed.D. is an associate director and senior research scientist at the 妻友社区 at 妻友社区 College. She leads the Work, Families and Children Team at WCW and studies women and employment, with a focus on working conditions and health and work-family systems, as well as child care policy and early care and education. She authored the chapter, 鈥淓mployment and Women鈥檚 Health,鈥� in M.V. Spiers, P.A. Geller & J.D. Kloss (Eds.), Women鈥檚 health psychology (46- 63). New York: John Wiley & Sons.