Women achieved record wage parity with men four times in the period 2000 to 2009.

Wage parity between men and women in the United States is a matter of law. You cannot discriminate in wages and salaries solely on the basis of sex. Yet, in the many years since that became the law of the land, women’s wages have never reached 100% parity.

There are many reason why that is. We are doing better, and the U.S. Census Bureau’s annual publication titled Income, Poverty and Health Insurance in the United States: 2009 reveals that progress.

The chart above shows the parity ratio from 2000 to 2009. In those ten years, the ratio set four records. Indeed, it is possible to state that by this measure the Bush years were good for women’s wage parity.

The report may suggest one reason why parity remains just out of reach. The numbers in households headed by a woman with no husband, single parent households, have increased or stayed steady for the last several years for whites and Asians. The same holds true for those same households below the poverty level. Coupled with a solid core of black women lead households in poverty, it would suggest one reason for the stall in wage parity.

Could wage parity in the modern economy be tied to the woman’s ability to have a partner in the household? The number of female headed households in poverty is up 40% in ten years and all such households are up 18%.

Wage parity is the measure of how close wages and salaries for women come to those for men, It is recorded as a percentage with 100% being equal pay or parity.

From a historical perspective, the parity ratio has been showing gains for women for some time. Click on the graph for a larger image.

historical graph of female to male wage parity through 2008

The Census Bureau’s report titled Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2008 has contained a section on wage parity between men and women for some time. It does not get much play in the media because it is a sterling record for the Bush administration. In his eight years in office, parity set four new records. The previous record, in 1997, was two percentage points less than the lowest parity percentage for the Bush administration’s tenure in office. Click on the graph for a larger image.

Historical graph showing female to male wage parity from 1990 through 2008 including the four records set during the Bush administration

Some of the difference is biological. Women still receive an ersatz penalty in their careers for taking time out to have children. We have also speculated that the change in the type of economy, to post-industrial or information, may also render some of the economic measurements of the past less accurate and less revealing.

The media are stating that the job losses during this recession are being borne mostly by men. This suggests the speculation that the 2009 Census report may find a new record parity as the economic situation forces more men into lower paying jobs or onto unemployment, thus raising the female side of the ratio.