The use of “entered” and “left” is confusing to me, are they comparing apples and oranges or net job gains and losses. Presumably some women entered the workforce during this time and some men left right?The rise of the dual income household led to the rise of the dual income mortgage, which has been catastrophic for housing affordability.
Not sure how you think a couple hundred thousand women leaving the work force due to childcare issues is going to lower housing cost?
>> But there are reasons to be concerned about women leaving the workforce. Without two salaries, many families struggle to afford basics like housing, food, and transportation; they have less money to spend, which means less money circulating in the economy. Their health care and other benefits are more precarious in an economy where only one partner works. Economic growth has slowed in the first half of the year; in the long term, slowing growth worsens people’s standard of living.
People are already delaying having kids, if they want them at all. They are unable to create the standard of living they want to stabilize a family in and can't do it until they are older. This only creates hardship for families now. The only group this is a long term win for are the ones that champion a declining population as better for the planet and the human condition. Not for your home prices and certainty not for the families directly affected by it now from losing that income.
Ultimately buyers set prices, not sellers. Thus a trend of households having less ability to incur larger debts should, over time, lead to greater housing affordability.
If the reason was women felt safe enough to forgo the extra income then it could be a long term trend. But that is not this. This is forcing women out due to short sighted decisions just long enough for the current kids to get old enough to not need a parent at home all the time.
Only long enough for a couple hundred thousand couples to go from 2 incomes to one. The long term trend will be women seeing they are going to be the one to take a hit and decide to not have kids and keep working. It reduces population (for people that care about that) and keeps people working cause now they have to make sure they have money for being elderly with zero children because they couldn’t afford them. This idea that women are going to suddenly revert to wanting to be stay at home mothers by making life harder for families is some fantastical thinking.
littlexsparkee•6mo ago
TLDR: RTO & lack of flexibility, fewer federal dollars for childcare, childcare labor force issues due to immigration enforcement
DaveZale•6mo ago
here is one table
https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distr...
If you are in the bottom 50% it's like being in the bottom caste of India