On Tuesday, millions of Americans celebrated #EqualPayDay to bring attention to the debunked myth of the gender pay gap. Well, except Elizabeth Warren for obvious reasons. Although this idea has been slammed repeatedly, it is still purported by politicians, the media and academics. Why? The reasons vary.
Do you know what day is often ignored? Equal Occupational Fatality Day.
In 2010, Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) introduced the Equal Occupational Fatality Day to generate some buzz pertaining to the massive gender disparity in work-related deaths that occur each year in the United States.
The next time Americans mark EOFD? January 21, 2029!
Here is a chart:
Here is what Perry writes:
Accounting for those significant differences in fatalities by gender, the next Equal Occupational Fatality Day won’t occur until almost 12 years from now – on January 21, 2029. That date symbolizes how far into the future American women will be able to continue working before they experience the same loss of life that men experienced in 2016 from work-related deaths. Because women tend to work in safer occupations than men on average, they have the advantage of being able to work for more than a decade longer than men before they experience the same number of male occupational fatalities in a single year.
Groups like the NCPE use Equal Pay Day to promote a goal of perfect gender pay equity, probably not realizing that they are simultaneously advocating an increase in the number of women working in higher-paying, but higher-risk occupations like roofing, logging, commercial fishing, construction, farming, and coal mining. The reality is that a reduction in the gender pay gap would come at a huge cost: several thousand more women will be killed each year working in dangerous occupations.
Further, the proponents of Equal Pay Day are promoting a statistical falsehood by suggesting that women working side-by-side with men in the same occupation for the same company are making 20% less than their male counterparts, which causes them to have to work an additional 64 days (and almost 14 weeks) to achieve “equal pay.” The NCPE’s statement that “because women earn less, on average, than men, they must work 20% longer for the same amount of pay,” implies that gender wage discrimination is behind the gender pay gap. Reality check: most empirical studies find that there is no gender earnings gap after factors like hours worked, child-birth and child care, career interruptions, and individual choices about industry and occupation are considered. In other words, Equal Pay Day is an annual exercise in recycling a verifiably false narrative and statistical myth about widespread gender discrimination using an apples-to-oranges comparison of unadjusted gender differences in income.
Where is the outrage?
Leave a Comment