Ruth Institute Blog

Interesting, and relates to some of our other recent posts, for interested parties.

By Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers

The lives of women in the United States have improved over the past 35 years by many objective measures, yet we show that measures of subjective well-being indicate that women’s happiness has declined both absolutely and relative to men. This decline in relative wellbeing is found across various datasets, measures of subjective wellbeing, demographic groups, and industrialized countries. Relative declines in female happiness have eroded a gender gap in happiness in which women in the 1970s reported higher subjective well-being than did men. These declines have continued and a new gender gap is emerging—one with higher subjective well-being for men.

By many measures, the progress of women over recent decades has been extraordinary. The gender wage gap has partly closed. Educational attainment has risen and is now surpassing that of men. Women have gained an unprecedented level of control over fertility. Technological change, in the form of new domestic appliances, has freed women from domestic drudgery. In short, women’s freedoms within both the family and market sphere have expanded. Francine D. Blau’s (1998) assessment of objective measures of female well-being since 1970 finds that women made enormous gains. Labor force outcomes have improved absolutely, as women’s real wages have risen for all but the least-educated women, and relatively, as women’s wages relative to those of men have increased for women of all races and education levels. Concurrently, female labor force participation has risen to record levels both absolutely and relative to that of men (Blau and Lawrence M. Kahn 2007 ). In turn, better market outcomes for women have likely improved their bargaining position in the home by raising their opportunities outside of marriage.

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