00:00:00
well something that women bring to the
00:00:01
table is producing something of economic
00:00:04
value as well and that's women's
00:00:05
reproductive Capital that women actually
00:00:07
are bringing to the table this ability
00:00:09
to procreate and create other human
00:00:12
beings and this is a tremendous source
00:00:14
of value in society because the same way
00:00:16
economists are fundamentally concerned
00:00:18
with how do we make all this stuff that
00:00:21
we consume well people all across the
00:00:24
world want to have children and so being
00:00:27
able to create children is a really
00:00:29
important form of capital in society
00:00:33
welcome to the ripple effect the podcast
00:00:36
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Dan Loney and in each episode we'll be
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ripple effect
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[Music]
00:01:07
so Corinne what was it that that had you
00:01:09
thinking about studying gender bias in
00:01:12
the workplace in the first place
00:01:14
well I think that's that's a big
00:01:16
question I think the main thing that I'm
00:01:18
interested in studying is I'm interested
00:01:20
in studying the economics of
00:01:22
being a woman and what sort of makes
00:01:25
that unique and challenging and also
00:01:28
special and
00:01:30
um and so you know I wanted to really
00:01:32
study the issues that were facing women
00:01:34
with the same seriousness that we apply
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to the rest of you know
00:01:38
economic science and so yeah I think it
00:01:41
wasn't so much starting with the
00:01:43
perspective of gender bias but starting
00:01:44
with the perspective of you know if
00:01:47
economics is the science of maximizing
00:01:50
subject to constraint subject to scarce
00:01:53
resources what are those unique
00:01:55
constraints that women are facing what
00:01:57
is that maximization or optimization
00:01:59
problem look like from a woman's
00:02:01
perspective and how can we use the same
00:02:02
tools that we use to study how firms
00:02:05
make decisions
00:02:06
um and how consumers make decisions to
00:02:08
understand the sort of um unique
00:02:10
spectrum of decisions that women need to
00:02:12
make yeah and so research like this is I
00:02:14
mean it's being talked about this issue
00:02:16
is being talked about a lot uh in
00:02:19
society in general so doing research on
00:02:21
these areas becomes very important as we
00:02:24
look to see where the development lies
00:02:27
yeah I think that's exactly right and I
00:02:29
think you know one of the things I hope
00:02:31
to accomplish with my research is that
00:02:33
when we talk about these issues I think
00:02:34
as I said we can't talk about them in a
00:02:37
separate domain from economics and I
00:02:39
wanted to bring together the
00:02:41
cutting-edge science of Economics with
00:02:43
these issues that affect women's lives
00:02:45
because you know a lot of what
00:02:46
economists do is study how people make
00:02:48
decisions and I think women are people
00:02:50
and women make decisions you know
00:02:52
economic decisions as well and decisions
00:02:54
have big economic consequences and so I
00:02:56
hope I'm giving some language
00:02:59
um
00:02:59
such as by introducing the term
00:03:01
reproductive capital and giving some
00:03:03
language to the economics of women's
00:03:05
decisions
00:03:07
um to bring them kind of out of this
00:03:09
domain of kind of treating them as like
00:03:10
a separate set of issues that we would
00:03:12
address through a separate set of tools
00:03:13
and kind of
00:03:14
um
00:03:15
bring them back into this domain of
00:03:18
economic decision making and
00:03:19
maximization and optimization
00:03:21
so if you can can you explain what
00:03:24
reproductive Capital really is yeah sure
00:03:27
so this is a term that I came up with
00:03:29
when I was in grad school and
00:03:31
um
00:03:32
you know we talk about human capital and
00:03:35
so well we'll start from the beginning
00:03:36
which is just you know the term Capital
00:03:38
typically means you know material things
00:03:41
of worth that can be used to create
00:03:43
other things of value right so we talk
00:03:45
about firms making a trade-off between
00:03:46
capital and labor and so they're
00:03:48
deciding how much do I want to use
00:03:50
workers how much do I want to use
00:03:51
machines okay well economists came up
00:03:53
with this term human capital which is
00:03:55
the fact that
00:03:57
skills that human beings have can be
00:03:59
used to create things of economic value
00:04:01
as well and so it's not just you know
00:04:03
that a machine can be a form of capital
00:04:04
but actually that you can have human
00:04:05
capital and that's going to produce
00:04:07
value and so we talked about education
00:04:08
as investing in human capital
00:04:11
so then I realized that while something
00:04:14
that women bring to the table is
00:04:16
producing something of economic value as
00:04:18
well and that's women's reproductive
00:04:19
Capital that women actually are bringing
00:04:22
to the table this ability to
00:04:24
procreate and create other human beings
00:04:26
which is pretty fantastic and this is a
00:04:29
tremendous source of value in society
00:04:30
because the same way economists are
00:04:33
fundamentally concerned with how do we
00:04:34
make all the stuff that we consume right
00:04:37
how does all the the consumer goodies
00:04:40
that we want how do those all get
00:04:42
manufactured and what's the optimal way
00:04:44
to do that how do we create Financial
00:04:45
Services
00:04:46
Etc
00:04:48
well people all across the world want to
00:04:52
have children and so being able to
00:04:54
create children is a really important
00:04:56
form of capital in society and so I
00:04:59
wanted to acknowledge that and coin this
00:05:01
term to demonstrate that this was the
00:05:04
source of economic value and I wanted to
00:05:07
deliberately create that parallelism
00:05:09
with human capital because one of the
00:05:11
things about reproductive Capital that I
00:05:13
highlighted my research is that it's
00:05:15
time limited it depreciates like all
00:05:18
forms of capital depreciates but
00:05:19
reproductive capitalism is very
00:05:21
specific and unforgiving schedule which
00:05:24
is that you know as women aged into
00:05:25
their late 30s and 40s they go through
00:05:29
um a reproductive decline eventually
00:05:30
menopause and so that time Horizon of
00:05:33
reproductive Capital creates a
00:05:36
fundamental trade-off between
00:05:37
investments in human capital which are
00:05:39
going to be worthwhile because you can
00:05:41
Market those skills and get some
00:05:43
economic returns that way versus
00:05:46
investing and using your reproductive
00:05:48
capital and having a family and
00:05:51
producing children and that's not
00:05:53
something you're going to Market in
00:05:56
general so it's not going to ever be
00:05:57
assigned this dollars and cents value on
00:05:59
the traditional Market but it actually
00:06:01
is something that's tremendously
00:06:03
economic value economically valuable and
00:06:06
we see that through people's choices
00:06:07
people's choices to invest their time
00:06:10
and money in children we see that
00:06:12
children are something that people value
00:06:14
and therefore we as economists should be
00:06:16
concerned with how do they get produced
00:06:19
were you able to determine a a level a
00:06:22
value
00:06:23
that really Associates what that
00:06:26
reproductive Capital can mean to a woman
00:06:30
as they're not only trying to have a
00:06:32
family but also trying to build out
00:06:34
their career
00:06:35
yeah so that was something that was
00:06:37
really important he was kind of trying
00:06:39
to look at this as an economic trade-off
00:06:41
and I said you know what there's the
00:06:43
personal value that you put on having
00:06:45
children and you know it's going to be
00:06:47
hard to quantify that but we know that
00:06:50
that's there and that's something that
00:06:51
is talked about a lot in the media and
00:06:54
it also has been talked about a lot in
00:06:55
the in the research literature right
00:06:57
that you know women are kind of facing
00:06:59
this trade-off with their biological
00:07:00
clock and they you know value having
00:07:02
kids and this is something that they
00:07:03
don't want to have to give up on um but
00:07:06
what they didn't see is really trying to
00:07:08
put an economic value on it and so to do
00:07:11
that
00:07:12
I turn to a type of Market where
00:07:16
reproductive Capital has value and
00:07:19
that's the marriage market so I thought
00:07:22
you know if I can show that this
00:07:24
actually affects women's perceived value
00:07:27
on the marriage Market I'm going to be
00:07:29
able to put an economic value on this
00:07:34
um resource of reproductive capital and
00:07:37
so what I did is I actually used a study
00:07:40
where I randomly assigned age and income
00:07:43
to dating profiles and then I had men
00:07:45
rate these women's dating profiles with
00:07:48
randomly assigned age and income and
00:07:51
what I found is that for each year that
00:07:53
a woman ages after age 30 she has to
00:07:57
earn an additional seven thousand
00:07:58
dollars a year to get the same rating in
00:08:00
this experiment
00:08:02
and because the age and the income are
00:08:04
randomly assigned I can attribute it to
00:08:07
you know it really is just that age
00:08:09
that's driving this whereas if I use
00:08:11
data from the world or from you know a
00:08:14
dating site where I saw who was
00:08:15
interested in whom I wouldn't be able to
00:08:17
separate out the fact that somebody
00:08:18
who's older has a lot of other things
00:08:20
going on in her life right somebody
00:08:22
who's older might be more likely to be
00:08:23
divorced they might have a different
00:08:25
photo they might have a different career
00:08:26
but here I was randomly assigning the
00:08:29
age and so I'm holding that profile
00:08:30
constant and one person is seeing her at
00:08:32
35 and somebody else has seen her at 36
00:08:35
and that I'm able to Value what does
00:08:36
that extra year mean and I found that it
00:08:40
was worth the equivalent of seven
00:08:41
thousand dollars of annual salary and
00:08:44
that was showing that men really valued
00:08:47
reproductive capital from their
00:08:49
potential partners and then the way I
00:08:51
was able to show that this is actually
00:08:54
about fertility and reproduction of
00:08:57
rather than other dimensions of age was
00:09:00
that I found that there was not this
00:09:03
preference for men who already had kids
00:09:04
from a previous relationship
00:09:06
and there wasn't this preference from
00:09:10
men who didn't have good knowledge that
00:09:13
there was a fertility decline between
00:09:14
ages 30 and 40. so if they thought oh
00:09:17
that's not something I have to worry
00:09:18
about until like 45 or later they didn't
00:09:20
have the same preference where they
00:09:22
showed declining ratings over that 30 to
00:09:24
40 time span
00:09:26
um and it also showed it was Stronger
00:09:28
for people who wanted a more serious
00:09:30
relationship who wanted to get married
00:09:31
and who wanted to have kids whereas if
00:09:34
you thought this was because you wanted
00:09:35
somebody who was young and fun and cool
00:09:37
to go drinking with you might think the
00:09:39
people who are looking for a more casual
00:09:41
relationship would actually have that
00:09:43
stronger preference for younger age but
00:09:44
it was actually the people who wanted to
00:09:46
get married and wanted to have kids who
00:09:48
showed this strong preference and so
00:09:50
therefore I attribute this preference to
00:09:52
the market value of fertility and it's
00:09:55
not the traditional Market where we're
00:09:57
able to put you know a price on it
00:09:59
because it's going to be sold but it is
00:10:01
a type of Market where you're making
00:10:03
these trade-offs between all these
00:10:04
different possible traits in your
00:10:06
partner and one of the things that makes
00:10:10
a woman more attractive on the marriage
00:10:12
Market is bringing reproductive Capital
00:10:14
to the table and so of course it has
00:10:18
personal value whether or not you're
00:10:20
able to have kids in this trade-off you
00:10:21
might be making with your career but I
00:10:23
wanted to show that there was a real
00:10:25
economic cost to it as well so that for
00:10:28
women if they were thinking about making
00:10:31
an investment you know let's say their
00:10:33
manager says I want to send you on this
00:10:36
assignment to Asia and it's going to be
00:10:38
really good for your career but you're
00:10:39
going to have to work 80 hours a week
00:10:41
and you know be totally 100 focused on
00:10:44
you know launching this new team
00:10:47
and that's going to cause you to say
00:10:49
okay this is gonna delay my timeline for
00:10:51
maybe getting married or having a family
00:10:53
it's gonna increase my earnings it's
00:10:57
gonna so it's gonna be good from a human
00:10:58
capital right but there's going to be an
00:11:00
appreciation in my reproductive Capital
00:11:01
she's facing an economic trade-off there
00:11:04
where you know there's value that she
00:11:06
could be making and money she could be
00:11:08
earning by making this investment but
00:11:10
there's an economic loss for making it
00:11:12
as well and so I wanted to put in those
00:11:14
terms to show that this isn't just a
00:11:16
personal decision this is an economic
00:11:17
decision and surrealistically for a lot
00:11:20
of women this is a a decision that they
00:11:23
have to make in terms of their career
00:11:25
slash in in correlation with their
00:11:28
personal life uh in order to see what
00:11:31
they value the most at that particular
00:11:33
time
00:11:35
yeah but I think you know it's not just
00:11:38
about what they value it's about them
00:11:40
sort of maximizing this economic
00:11:42
equation where these are two things that
00:11:44
are both valuable and you know she has
00:11:46
to make a trade-off between them and so
00:11:48
I think you're absolutely right that the
00:11:49
issue here is that
00:11:51
um both things are valuable and in some
00:11:55
ways our society is not set up so that
00:11:57
you can have it all at once right and so
00:11:59
that's kind of exactly the policy
00:12:01
recommendation that I would make is you
00:12:02
know we can make this trade-off easier
00:12:04
for women if we make it more possible to
00:12:08
do both things at once and we make there
00:12:10
be less of a trade-off between
00:12:12
maximizing your human capital and
00:12:14
maximizing your reproductive capital
00:12:16
so with this information now how do you
00:12:21
think that this impacts the the
00:12:23
consideration of women when they're
00:12:26
thinking about planning their careers or
00:12:27
they're thinking about planning their
00:12:29
lives what do you think the the the the
00:12:31
the the the background is there
00:12:34
well I think this is something that
00:12:36
women think about and this is something
00:12:37
that women sort of inherently know and
00:12:40
it's kind of hard for people who are not
00:12:42
women to maybe believe that because it's
00:12:44
not something that they've been faced
00:12:45
with all their lives but I have this
00:12:47
paper about Israel making IVF free and
00:12:50
what we see is that when ivf's made free
00:12:52
you know from a naive perspective you
00:12:55
might think okay that's going to impact
00:12:56
the women who are like you know between
00:12:58
35 and you know early 40s who haven't
00:13:01
had children yet and now they're going
00:13:03
to be able to use IVF to have children
00:13:04
but we actually see a tremendous impact
00:13:07
on young women who are looking forward
00:13:10
and planning their life and now they
00:13:12
know that this technology is going to be
00:13:14
available to them later in life and so
00:13:15
they make the decision to delay marriage
00:13:18
they make the decision to finish the
00:13:19
degree they make the decision to break
00:13:22
off the relationship that was only so so
00:13:24
and maybe you know play the field a
00:13:25
little bit more and wait for somebody
00:13:27
else we see them increasing their
00:13:30
representation and getting graduate
00:13:31
degrees at Fields such as um being
00:13:33
doctors and lawyers and
00:13:36
um professors and things that require
00:13:37
these long-term Investments and so we
00:13:39
see young women
00:13:41
making decisions in anticipation of how
00:13:45
this reproductive time Horizon is
00:13:47
changing based on the introduction of
00:13:49
this new technology and so I think this
00:13:51
is something that women know is a real
00:13:54
constraint and they inherently plan
00:13:56
around and they think about it and they
00:13:58
talk about it
00:13:59
um when they talk about it with their
00:14:01
with their mentors and you know they map
00:14:04
out their careers relative to this
00:14:06
reproductive constraint and so as much
00:14:08
as
00:14:09
in some ways maybe my research is
00:14:12
depressing and I'm showing oh now you
00:14:14
have this other constraint to think
00:14:15
about but it's also going to affect your
00:14:17
appeal on the marriage market and it's
00:14:18
kind of worth this much on the marriage
00:14:20
Market I hope that it also makes women
00:14:22
feel seen because they've been making
00:14:24
this trade-off they've been facing this
00:14:27
fundamental
00:14:28
you know Catch 22 of like you can't do
00:14:31
both you can't have it all and you know
00:14:34
it can be crazy making to feel like okay
00:14:37
I feel like there's this big issue that
00:14:39
I'm dealing with and you know yet it's
00:14:42
the responsibility is all on my
00:14:43
shoulders and it's treated as something
00:14:45
that's like because of me because I want
00:14:47
a family because I you know value this
00:14:49
now I'm the one who's kind of stuck in
00:14:52
this bind and I wanted to tell and show
00:14:55
women
00:14:56
no this is a real economic constraint
00:14:58
you're facing and you're facing it
00:14:59
because
00:15:01
you uniquely are in possession of
00:15:04
something that's super economically
00:15:05
valuable reproductive capital and you're
00:15:08
trying to figure out how to maximize the
00:15:09
value of this depreciating asset that
00:15:11
you're holding and this other asset that
00:15:13
requires your time to invest in it which
00:15:16
is your human capital so how do you
00:15:18
think then does this impact employers
00:15:22
with their thought process about the
00:15:24
structure of the company and what to
00:15:26
expect moving forward and also because
00:15:28
this is obviously part of a of a public
00:15:30
policy debate going on in our country
00:15:33
right now as well about what policy
00:15:35
makers need to be thinking about around
00:15:36
this
00:15:38
yeah so I hope that um that firms and
00:15:43
policy makers don't just
00:15:45
invest in
00:15:47
um fertility extending technology I
00:15:50
think that that is
00:15:52
kind of not solving the fundamental
00:15:54
problem and so sometimes that's the
00:15:56
solution we see firms reach for is that
00:15:58
they say like okay we'll pay for our
00:16:00
employees to freeze their eggs right but
00:16:01
that's not solving this trade-off that's
00:16:03
just kind of kicking the can down the
00:16:04
road and it's kind of acknowledging if
00:16:07
you're a firm that's doing that you're
00:16:08
and you're not doing other things you're
00:16:10
saying okay I'm not going to work to
00:16:12
make this more sustainable for you to
00:16:14
balance career and family I'm just going
00:16:16
to ask you to wait and do it later after
00:16:18
we've sort of gotten the value that we
00:16:20
want to out of you right and so you know
00:16:22
I think that it's great if firms want to
00:16:24
pay for egg freezing but they can't stop
00:16:26
there right I don't want to just move it
00:16:29
further down the line because then women
00:16:31
are going to be facing that trade-off
00:16:32
that can't work forever so women are
00:16:34
just going to face that trade-off when
00:16:36
the time comes so I think what I would
00:16:38
look for instead is
00:16:41
that we
00:16:42
truly place value as a society on
00:16:47
reproductive capital and on caregiving
00:16:49
and acknowledge that
00:16:52
the time required for caregiving has not
00:16:55
declined you know over the past 20 years
00:16:58
and yet we have way more women in the
00:17:01
labor force and we have way fewer
00:17:04
households that are set up to have just
00:17:06
one primary earner and one person who's
00:17:08
able to do a lot of the home production
00:17:10
and caregiving and focus exclusively on
00:17:14
that and so
00:17:15
all employees are kind of looking for
00:17:19
more flexibility and more ability to
00:17:21
kind of do this caregiving work and you
00:17:25
know have their families and prioritize
00:17:27
that in their lives because the
00:17:30
structure of the American household has
00:17:32
changed it's by and large two earners
00:17:35
and we need to adjust to that so I think
00:17:38
that's one thing that I would say is
00:17:40
just
00:17:40
um for firms to understand that
00:17:44
that time spent on caregiving has not
00:17:46
been declining and in fact it's been
00:17:48
increasing so since the 1990s we've been
00:17:51
spending more time with our kids because
00:17:53
in this new economy and this is um was
00:17:57
first documented in a paper by Raymond
00:18:00
Ramey called the Rugrat race but in this
00:18:03
new economy where our children's human
00:18:04
capital is such a determination a
00:18:07
determinant of their future success
00:18:10
parents are investing a lot more time
00:18:12
with their children and we understand a
00:18:14
lot more that the time we put in results
00:18:16
in the outcomes that they have and the
00:18:18
achievements that they have later in
00:18:20
life and so parents are doing a lot more
00:18:21
intensive parenting and that's not
00:18:24
something that you can solve with a
00:18:25
machine so throughout
00:18:28
um
00:18:28
the 20th century we saw
00:18:32
time at home be replaced by machines
00:18:35
like dishwashers and washing machines
00:18:37
and so for a little while it got easier
00:18:40
to do the work at home because we had
00:18:43
technology but technology can't replace
00:18:45
our time spent with children and so what
00:18:47
we've seen over the past
00:18:49
25 years is that time going up when we
00:18:53
look at surveys like the American time
00:18:55
use survey we see people spending more
00:18:57
time on caregiving not less time on
00:18:59
caregiving and so that's not going away
00:19:01
and so it's something that firms
00:19:02
fundamentally need to address and so
00:19:05
that's my first big message to firms is
00:19:08
think about caregiving as work that all
00:19:10
of your employees have to do and figure
00:19:12
out how that fits in with the work that
00:19:15
they need to do for you and my second
00:19:17
big message for firms which is I think
00:19:18
part of that
00:19:19
is rethinking flexibility to mean not
00:19:23
just flexibility during the work day but
00:19:25
flexibility across the life cycle so
00:19:27
during the work day it's kind of part of
00:19:29
that first big message is you know we've
00:19:31
recognized like Zoom is a great
00:19:32
technology that we can use to like you
00:19:34
know not necessarily require people to
00:19:36
be in the office when their kid is
00:19:37
homesick right or you know breaking up
00:19:40
their face time so that you know you
00:19:41
don't need to stay at the office till 8
00:19:42
pm and Miss family dinner maybe you go
00:19:44
home at five have did when your kids get
00:19:47
out of daycare you have dinner with your
00:19:48
family and then you log back on after
00:19:50
they're asleep and you know get that
00:19:52
last hour or so of work in so that's
00:19:54
flexibility across the work day and I
00:19:55
think that's something we need to invest
00:19:57
in but the piece that I think is new
00:19:59
with this understanding of reproductive
00:20:01
capital and it's kind of specific
00:20:04
schedule of decline which is that it
00:20:06
really depreciates most rapidly during a
00:20:08
woman's 30s which is the same time her
00:20:10
human capital tends to increase in value
00:20:12
and we see salaries going up the most
00:20:15
is that we need flexibility across the
00:20:17
life cycle so we need to say why is it
00:20:21
that the typical career path is you get
00:20:24
your MBA and then immediately you jump
00:20:26
on the partner track at the consulting
00:20:28
firm or at the investment bank or that
00:20:31
high investment period And whatever firm
00:20:33
you're in where you're expected to put
00:20:34
in you know 75 hours a week
00:20:38
when you're in your 30s and that's the
00:20:41
time when reproductive capital is
00:20:42
declining is there a way to build in
00:20:45
flexibility across the life cycle so
00:20:46
that women can make some of these
00:20:48
Investments earlier or later and be able
00:20:51
to have more time to actually maximize
00:20:53
the value of their human capital and the
00:20:55
reproductive capital and as we see
00:20:57
people's working lives extend into their
00:20:59
70s there's no reason why women
00:21:02
shouldn't be able to make some of these
00:21:03
big investments in their 40s and be able
00:21:06
to have the type of high-powered careers
00:21:08
um that we see women dropping out of
00:21:11
because firms too often force them to
00:21:14
choose
00:21:15
Korean great to have you with us today
00:21:16
thanks very much
00:21:18
thank you so much Dan always
00:21:21
thank you for listening to the ripple
00:21:23
effect we hope you found this episode
00:21:24
informative and engaging don't forget to
00:21:27
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00:21:29
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Insight from the Wharton School
