Family Life

A long-term trend in family life has been the increase in the labor force participation of mothers. Given these changes in behavior, it isn’t surprising that most people disagree with the statement that “Family life suffers when mothers work full-time.” Yet in recent years, there has been a notable increase in the proportion agreeing with this statement among both men (solid lines) and women (dashed lines). Source: General Social Survey.














Recently many have tried to link concerns about the growing obesity problem with growth in mother's employment. Of course, we all know that correlation isn't causation. Also, I think some people forget that many more two-parent families would be in poverty if mother’s didn’t work.

Monday we'll post a comment on North Carolina demographics and exactly how bad this Rev. Wright affair would have to be to lead to an Obama loss in that state.

Indiana's Demographics

After the Pennsylvania primary, much was made of Obama’s senior problem. Exit poll data indicate that Obama has recently done better with younger voters, those with a college degree, and African Americans. Clinton has done better with Anglos and (sometimes) Hispanics, older voters, and those with less education. How did Pennsylvania’s demographics disadvantage Obama? And perhaps more importantly as we head into the Indiana Primary, are Indiana’s demographics similarly advantageous to Clinton?


The answer is mixed. Pennsylvania’s age distribution is older than the rest of the country. Indiana is more similar to the United States as a whole. This works in Obama's favor. Indiana’s race-ethnic distribution is much like Pennsylvania’s although there is a slightly higher proportion of African Americans. Given that Obama gets an extremely high percentage of the black vote, even this small difference can work in his favor, just as the slightly older age distribution in Pennsylvania worked in Clinton’s.

Slightly more hopeful news for Clinton can be found in the education distribution. Indiana has an even lower proportion with a bachelor’s degree than Pennsylvania. Her enthusiasm might be slightly dampened, however, when she finds that this is not because Indiana has more people who stopped their formal education at the end of high school. In Pennsylvania, Clinton won 64% of the votes of high school graduates who didn't go to college. Indiana's actually has a slightly smaller prorpotion of people in this group and proportionately more people who started but didn’t complete college. Clinton’s advantage in this group is not great; she won 51% of this group in Pennsylvania.














Bottom Line: Overall the demographics of Indiana compared to Pennsylvania indicate that the upcoming race should be closer and and Demography is King.

Come back tomorrow for an analysis of trends in attitudes towards mother's employment.

Aging

Women have a longer life expectancy than men and as a result among the elderly, women are (on average) older than men. This explains why women’s disability profile is worse than men’s. In the graph below, men are more likely to have no limitations to physical functioning. In contrast women are more likely than men to be limited in their ability to bathe, dress, eat, get out of chairs, walk, go outside, or use the toilet without assistance. These activities are called “Activities of Daily Living”, or ADLs.














IADLS are Instrumental activities of Daily living such as using the telephone, doing housework, preparing meals, shopping, and managing money.

Come back tomorrow for an analysis of Indiana's demographics and the implications for the democratic primaries there.

Poverty Profile

Levels of poverty are higher among children than adults and higher among women than men (Source: American Community Survey).


















Tune back in tomorrow for information on gender differences in aging.

Weekly Earnings

Economic news of late has generally not been good, particularly in real estate. A new release by the Bureau of Labor statistics indicates that average weekly earnings in March 2008 was $607.49, up 4.3% from a year ago. Unfortunately inflation ate up much of that gain and the increase in earnings adjusted for the consumer price index was only .3%. A careful look at the report reveals that the increase in earnings was largely located in the Natural Resources and Mining Industry. The gains in those industries were offset by declines in Retail Trade.















Tune back in tomorrow for a profile of the people in poverty.