Year: 2007
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Since the late 1970s, researchers find that an increasingly large percentage of the economically disadvantaged are women, a fact contributing to a severe gender gap in income attainment.Most research on poverty and gender inequality focuses on salaries and wages as the primary proxy for evaluating economic well-being.However, earned income fluctuates greatly and may not provide an accurate picture of the economic welfare of an individual over time.In contrast, wealth -understood as the value of person's assets less their debts -captures long-term economic security.I broaden current research on gender and family status inequalities by using wealth as a measure of economic welfare.My research explores the joint effects of gender, marital status, and parenthood on net worth of economic assets and portfolio behavior in order to understand whether in the United States the feminization of the disadvantaged and the pauperization of motherhood extend to wealth.Further, to gain greater insight into the parental gap in wealth inequality, I focus on the timing of fertility behavior, specifically examining the effects of teen parenthood, adult parenthood, and childlessness on adult wealth for young baby boomers, born between 1957 and 1964.My analyses are based on the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth between 1979 and 2000.Using various statistical techniques, predominantly regression analysis, I find that young baby boomers' marital status and parental status are very strong Dedicated to my loving parents, husband, and friends.v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am grateful to Lisa Keister for introducing me to the topic of wealth and encouraging me to carve my own niche in this new and exciting field of sociology.I also wish to thank Kazimierz M. Slomczynski who gently and skillfully guided me through the final stages of the dissertation process.I thank my other committee members, Douglas Downey, Kristi Williams
Author: Alexis Yamokoski
Institution: The Ohio State University
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2600760166