

Elite colleges lower women's wages - yummyfajitas
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/02/elite-college-fems-earn-less.html

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Symmetry
Do we have any good theories about mechanisms for this other than "One obvious
explanation is that women at more elite colleges married richer classmate men,
and so felt less need to earn money themselves."?

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weichi
Of course there are. Which makes Hanson's next sentence - "Why don’t the
study’s authors want us to hear about that?" - surprising. Overcoming Bias,
indeed.

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yummyfajitas
I believe that Hanson was remarking on the fact that, although the explanation
given is plausible, the authors didn't discuss it in the paper and pooled men
and women together afterwards. I don't think he was putting it forward as the
only possible explanation.

~~~
weichi
But Hanson doesn't say "Why don't the study's authors discuss possible
explanations for this finding, such as xxx?" Instead, he insinuates that the
authors were perfectly aware of this possible explanation, but think that
their readers should not be exposed to it for some nefarious reasons (that's
what the phrase "why doesn't X want us to hear Y" means colloquially). This
sentence leads me to believe that Hanson is coming to this discussion with
some biases of his own.

Anyway, other explanations could be that the result is not real (which Hanson
does discuss at the end), or that women from these colleges choose lesser-
paying careers for some reason other than that they are married to rich men
... perhaps women at elite colleges 25 years ago were unusually interested in
charity work. I don't think Hanson's proposed explanation is necessarily
wrong, but that phrase "why don't they want us to hear about this?" really
rubs me the wrong way.

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msluyter
I'd just like to note that Robin Hanson's blog is generally quite thought
provoking. He posts on a variety of topics relating to psychology and
economics, often from the viewpoint of status competition and signalling.
Really fascinating stuff.

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jhamburger
Still a shock to me- although I wouldn't be surprised to hear that all of the
exotic, esoteric liberal arts programs offered at elite colleges don't lead to
high paying careers.

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jbooth
Yeah, I feel like there must be something else going on. Regardless of the
quality of top colleges, you'd think selectivity alone would lead to a higher
earning group. Apparently according to the guy's update, the sample controlled
for women who left the workforce entirely, so rich doctor hubby from Harvard
isn't the answer..

I'd note that people who go to extremely selective colleges and are white (and
maybe asian) are almost definitely from a pretty well-off family. The study
did notice that black and hispanic people showed a huge income increase, so
maybe the people who were already well off felt less of a need to make money,
they take some socially beneficial or interesting-to-them job in exchange for
less pay.

Another note.. this is on earnings 20 years later, which might make sense for
a few reasons but also means that things could have changed in the last 20
years (not that I have a reason to think they have).

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jdminhbg
Even if you control for leaving the workforce entirely, rich doctor hubby from
Harvard could still be the answer in that it frees up idealistic wife from
Harvard to work in non-profits or other spiritually rewarding but non-
remunerative jobs.

That said, those are just conjectures -- I think it's more interesting that
the result was so jarring to them they didn't bother following up with some
sort of potential explanation.

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kenjackson
And the results seem to change so much from data source to data source and
cohort, and just about any other factor that it is clear to me that we really
don't have a solid statement.

I wouldn't be at all surprised that they do this with 1995 data and the
results are completely different.

