My posts here sometimes go way a little beyond The Lattice Group’s work/life balance mission, so I’ve starting a new perosnal blog at phdinprecarity.tumblr.com to deposit the miscellaneous thoughts in my head. Hope you’ll join me there.

Happy 2012!

Liz

Basically, when the author, Kate Bolick, was 28 she broke up with her boyfriend because “something was missing” and she thought she might emerge from the break-up a stronger, more independent person. Fast-forward to age 39: Bolick does appear to be a strong, independent person; she never did find a mate, though. Bolick doesn’t think she’s alone. Cut to recent demographic trends of less marrying and later marriages. Basis of article: There are a whole lot of single women out there!

Yes and no. As I think she mentions (the article really is long), actually marriage among highly educated and financially well-off women has increased in recent decades, except among black women.

Rising inequality in marriage aside, the cultural point Bolick speaks to is a question I think many Gen Y:ers, including myself, struggle with: should we try to make a relationship work or should we try to make ourselves happy, first and foremost?

Ultimately, I think there is and should be a spectrum of answers to that question. For some people, marriage will remain the Holy Grail, whether out of social pressure or psychological make-up. For others, a life outside of traditional coupledom will be the best choice. Her point is that all of these lifestyles are perfectly valid.

If you do want to get married, though,  my personal view is that you have to settle. Even if you don’t think you’re settling, you have to settle. No one is perfect. No one will fulfill your every need. You will have to sacrifice–a lot, probably all the time–to stay married. The real question then becomes: is marriage worth it? Now that we don’t necessarily need marriage for economic reasons. Again, I think people will have very different answers to that question.

What do you think? Is it worth it?

Why? Because despite American optimism and ‘land of opportunity’ rhetoric, we’ve finally admitted to ourselves that the playing field in our country is not level. The game is rigged. The rich are getting richer, while the rest of us have seen our incomes stagnate or decline.

Of course, social scientists have been trumpeting rising income and wealth inequality for decades. Though there are a lot of ways to measure inequality and you will likely hear many different statistics as the debate unfolds, there is there is widespread consensus among researchers that inequality in income has increased markedly since the 1980s and that the level of inequality today is greater than at any point in the past 40 years.

The demands of the Occupy Wall Street protest are not yet clear. That’s okay, though–it would be seriously suspicious if a truly grassroots movement had a predetermined list of demands. But as long as Occupy Wall Street is taking suggestions, here are mine:

1. Tackle the distribution of wealth in the US

If we no longer want to be part of a 99th percentile whose wealth shrinks while the top 1% see their wealth continually rise, we’re going to need to tackle the distribution of wealth in this country. I know that sounds scary and socialist, but here’s a secret: socialist democracies do not have the kind of income inequality we do. For example, income inequality in France actually declined over the past four decades.

• Raise tax rates: Income and wealth inequality can be tamed through progressive taxes. Taxes rates in the US are below the OECD average. Let’s keep the progressivity of our tax structure, but increase the rates. Let’s learn to love taxes!
• Raise capital gains taxes: A capital gains tax of 15% is patently unfair. Why should I pay higher taxes on the earnings from my job than from the earnings from my portfolio? As someone who owns a whopping 5 shares of Apple stock, I’m happy to pay an extra 20% on profits I made doing absolutely nothing. Warren Buffet, who has a considerably larger portfolio than I do, agrees.

2. Increase universal benefits

To ensure the long-term health of  a solid and growing middle class, we need to invest in all Americans. Forget your common views about welfare, which is stigmatized as only for the poor in the U.S. Welfare is really about the health and success of our entire society–it should be for all of us. Taxes should benefit everyone, including the rich.

• Universal health care coverage: This is a no-brainer. We live in the wealthiest country in the world.  Yet it is the only developed country where people can go bankrupt, even die, because they can’t afford to pay for health care. Today many of my friend stay at jobs they hate because they’re afraid to loose their benefits. That hardly bodes well for an economy that needs everyone to be putting in 110% of their energy.
• Free higher education: I know this one will seem far-fetched, but that’s only because we have become so used to making do with less and less. Higher education is free in almost all European countries. The UC system offered a world class education at nearly no cost to students until 1970 (coincidentally the decade that income inequality started to rise). If we want to invest in the future of our country, a free public education option is a necessity.
• Paid vacation, sick leave, and parental leave: Once again, America is unique in the developed world. We are only 1 of 4 countries that does not provide paid maternity leave to new mothers. The top 20 world economies all guarantee workers at least 10 days of paid vacation or more; American workers are guaranteed zero. We, the 99%, deserve better.
• Public child care: The average cost of child care for an infant in 2010 ranged from $4,650 in Mississippi to $18,200 in DC. Meanwhile, 99% of French parents take advantage of their country’s excellent, free public child care system.

By raising tax rates for those that can afford to pay more–$25 million is still great, even if it’s not $50 million–and by providing universal benefits we can start to grow the middle class instead of watch it wither. We can lift the poor into the middle class instead of contributing to a cycle of poverty. We can invest in our future and ensure a stronger country for a long time to come.

Those are my two cents. I look forward to hearing suggestions from other occupiers (whoa, that sounded a bit radical for someone sipping an espresso, but I think I like it.)

What do you think?

Is this the future of higher ed? Even cheaper than an adjunct! (photo by tama leaver on flickr).

Yesterday I interviewed a university lecturer as part of a project I’m doing on “nonstandard work arrangements among professionals” (omg, someone please suggest a sexier title, that one made even me fall asleep).

Quick background: For a long time, most people had a standard employment arrangement. One, stable employer provided benefits and a largely indefinite contract. A lot of jobs are not standard in this way anymore. Think temps, independent contractors, freelancers, etc. The trend toward non-standard work started with low-paying jobs, as employers moved to the “just-in-time” production model and sought a more flexible workplace. But there is evidence that non-standard employment arrangements are increasing in more and more occupations, even among professionals.

Some people want a nonstandard arrangement. They want to a more flexible career path, they want to take time off, they want to work from more convenient locations–a lot of the things The Lattice Group has advocated over the years. With the rise of the internet and mobile technology, flexible employment has become more available to more and more people.

But there is a seriously dark underbelly to all this employment flexibility. And a lot of people are being forced into it by powers outside their control.

Take the lecturer I interviewed. She has a PhD. She couldn’t find a tenure-track job when she graduated so she took a lecturer position at a major university. While tenure-track professors teach 3-6 courses a year and then spend the rest of the time on research (which is what counts for climbing up the academic food chain), our lecturer had to teach up to 24–!!!–courses a year. That leaves no time for research, which means she will likely never get a tenure track job.

Not that there are many tenure-track jobs anymore. In 1969, 96.7% of faculty positions were tenure-track appointments. These are full-time positions, with good pay and great benefits. By the 1990s, that figure was less than 50%. Now, only 1 in 4  faculty appointments is to a full-time, tenure-track position. Instead, colleges and universities hire adjuncts and lecturers; they do the bulk of the teaching, but they are hired on contract basis. Often part-time. Often with fewer benefits. [Note to people considering PhD programs: don't].

The lecturer I interviewed teaches at 3 different universities to string together a decent living. Three, at the same time! She told me that sometimes she can’t even remember what she said to which class.

This is  someone who did everything right: went to college, did well, went to graduate school, did well. She thought that becoming a professional would lead to a good career. But professions are no longer immune from what I now think of as the ‘management consulting’ method (sorry b-school friends): cut, sub-contract, repeat. Everything is about increasing profits. Of course it’s cheaper to hire an adjunct part-time rather than hire an expensive tenure-track professor. But is it a good strategy long-term?

I think, dear readers, these trends should scare the shit out of most of you. I’ve interviewed lawyers, doctors, engineers, psychologists, architects. Same story: they thought they were on track to an upwardly mobile career, but now many find themselves in part-time positions or hustling as independent contractors. Many like the increased autonomy and freedom from corporate work culture of their new arrangements. But they are also constantly stressed about finding the next gig, paying their own health insurance, disability, and retirement benefits.

Flexibility and entrepreneurship can be great. But I fear that a lot of us are being set up for some serious exploitation if we don’t start opening our eyes. Though I guess as Americans, we always think we’ll be the exception.

And that’s today’s pep talk!

photo by Sean Choe on flickr

With all the social and cultural changes in the last 50 years, you’d expect marriage to go the way of the dinosaurs. Women don’t need it for economic reasons anymore, we can enjoy premarital sex to our hearts content, and we’ve all heard the staggeringly high divorce statistics in America. And yet, studies find that today young people value marriage just as much as they did half a century ago. Demographers predict that a whopping 90% of us will eventually marry. But why?

For the prestige. At least that’s what some sociologists have begun to argue.

Fifty years ago, Americans of all social classes married at roughly the same, high rate. Today, poor men and women are half as likely to get married as individuals with higher incomes. It’s not because the poor don’t value marriage; on the contrary, studies find that the poor value marriage as much or more than most Americans. But they feel that getting married requires a certain degree of financial stability: the ability to buy a modest home, a car and some furniture, and enough money to afford a decent wedding. Poor people aspire to this modest material stability but  most won’t be able to attain it.

On the other hand, for college-educated middle and upper-class Americans this modest amount of financial stability is more or less assured (or at least it has been for pre-Great Recession generations). It might take us longer these days—we feel we need to acquire a few letters to put after our last names or start a successful venture first—but we get there eventually.

Why don’t we just stick with cohabitation? It’s readily available, no paperwork required. Sociologists argue that cohabitation is a less prestigious form of union than marriage, requiring a less public demonstration of commitment and financial security.

I just moved in with my boyfriend after three years of dating. Why don’t we just get married? I think part of the answer is that most of our friends haven’t started getting married and we’re sheep-ish. Another part is that we can’t afford the lifestyle upgrade that’s expected.

As a couple that lives together, the fact that we have our own apartment furnished with flea market finds and can pay our utility bills on time is a major win. As an engaged couple, I feel like Craigslist hand-me-downs wouldn’t cut it. But we can’t afford Pottery Barn (we can barely afford IKEA).

Friends of mine recently got engaged. A big, for-her-only diamond engagement ring is just not their thing, so they fashioned engagement rings for both of them out of red beads. They say that it makes a lot of people uncomfortable; people avoid asking about it. I think the reason it rubs people the wrong way is that it’s not part of the modern marriage package, which is now supposed to signal a certain status. Their engagement rings trip up the signal.

Even though there are many forms of partnership available to people these days—dating, cohabitation, same-sex partnership, step-families—marriage stands out as aspirational. There’s the diamond ring and the dress and the party and the honeymoon. Sociologist Andrew Cherlin writes that “marriage is at once less dominant and more distinctive than it was. It has evolved from a marker of conformity to a marker of prestige.”

I find his assessment of marriage as a distinctive form of prestige pretty persuasive. Just think about the last wedding you attended and ask yourself if the caviar station and enormous cake were even close to necessary. (No, but, they sure were awesome).

I’m less sure that marriage isn’t about conformity. Studies show that it’s college educated young people that are most likely to believe that you have to be married before having children. I’m not sure if it’s because they’ve read the statistics and know that children do better when both biological parents are present (present, not necessarily married) or if they simply feel like it would be taboo for someone in their social group to have kids out of wedlock.

Even though I am more and more open to the idea of never getting married—mostly because I neurotically fear that the thrill of the chase is gone once you get married—I’m still hesitant about the idea of having kids outside of marriage. I have this feeling that I want to be “sure” of a commitment before I have kids with someone. At the same time, I know there is no sure thing when it comes to marriage.

I think I’m going to postpone the marriage question for a while and busy myself assembling IKEA furniture.

We could have better public child care or just start praying to fertility goddesses again.

Since about 1965, most countries in the Western world have experienced drops in fertility.  For a population to keep from shrinking, women should have an average of 2.1 kids. (It’s called the replacement rate, and it actually varies depending on a country’s mortality rate, so the replacement rate for developing countries is higher). Fertility matters not only if you care about your country not disappearing, but also if you’re going to grow old. The lower the fertility rate, the fewer young workers there are to help support older citizens.

In Europe, only the Irish manage to reach replacement rate, though France and some Nordic countries come pretty close. The U.S. fertility rate is 2.1, but that is only because of the higher fertility rate of immigrants who come from developing countries where fertility rates are high. Native-born women are in the same boat as their European peers. That is, they’re either not having kids or having fewer kids.

Why?

Demographers have been trying to figure this out for decades. Some argue that we’ve become increasingly individualistic. Others argue that people opt for a quantity-quality balance with their children. Now that it takes so much effort and money to raise a child of sufficient quality to be worth our while, we’ve had to reduce the quantity of kids we have. Then there is the advent of modern forms of birth control.

The best explanation I’ve come across so far, though, is from a paper by Peter McDonald, a demographer at Australian National University. It’s a little difficult to follow at first, but bear with me.

He argues that where there is incoherence in the level of gender equity of different social institutions, low fertility results. Specifically, in countries with low fertility there tend to be higher levels of gender equity in institutions that treat people as individuals (like education and the job market), but low levels of gender equity in institutions that treat individuals as part of a family unit (employment conditions, government transfers, the family itself).

Consider a woman in any Western country. The barriers to education have long been lifted and she is now likely better educated than most of her male peers. Most careers are now open to her as well and she has little difficulty finding a job on the employment market. As an individual, increases in gender equity have served her well. Awesome.

Yet when she becomes part of a married couple and has a child, she will experience a lack of gender equity in lots of other social institutions: the tax code of many countries penalizes the second income earner, caregiving is still considered a woman’s responsibility (for example, many companies may offer maternity leave but not paternity leave), and services like public child care may not exist.

McDonald’s argument is that women who have opportunities for advancement in education and the market but face other institutions that favor a male-breadwinner model will choose not to have children or have fewer children than they would otherwise want.

Jsut open any newspaper, and you’ll see that the realities in many countries support this theory. Countries with this high gender equity/low gender equity mismatch (like Italy, Greece, Switzerland, and Germany) have low birth rates. In Germany, about 30% of women don’t have children (40% of female college graduates) and of those women that do have children only 14% return to full-time employment. It appears that women, faced with great educational and job opportunties but crappy family support institutions, have to make a choice between employment and having children.

On the other hand, McDonald points out that Nordic social institutions strive for gender neutrality; services, taxes, and transfers are based on individuals rather than the family unit. They assume that every individual parent deserves child care options, flexible employment conditions, similar tax codes, etc. Fertility rates in Nordic countries are relatively high.

Simple policy answer: high levels of gender equity in all social institutions.

Still, no matter how good social policies are, I can’t imagine fertility rates shooting up in the Western world. It really does seem impossibly expensive and, maybe this is just me, but  how much Disney and baby talk can one parent endure?

If you’re interested in what’s going on in the developing world, let the the incomparable Hans Rosling blow your mind:

As soon as we signed the lease I set off making budgets and shopping lists because I’m slightly obsessive like that. I became a bit overwhelmed while making the cleaning supplies list. Frankly, I don’t have any idea how to really clean. So far, I’ve managed to keep my shared apartments  looking habitable with some superficial dusting and tiddying, but I never regularly clean.

I shared my last apartment with two other girls. I did my best to clean up after myself in the common spaces, but we never divided the hardcore cleaning jobs– the toilet, the shower, the oven grease. So it went un-done. After a few months one of my roommates suggested we hire a cleaning service (I can’t get myself to write maid). Having read Nickel and Dimed, I felt uncomfortable about it but not uncomfortable enough, apparently, to argue.

The cleaning lady arrived with an army of products–and her young son. Together they spent 2 hours cleaning our apartment. The apartment was spotless and I never felt so horrible in my entire life.

There are two arguments I can think of on the pro side of hiring a cleaner. One is that that dual-earner households or individuals who work long hours need help. I have a friend who is an investment banker and works 12-14 hour days. I can’t imagine how she would fit in a toilet cleaning. The other argument is that it’s a need that creates jobs.

I can see that a high-pace career could make finding time to clean difficult on an individual level. I find it hard to judge these people, though I so love to judge. I just hope that, unlike former billionaire California gubernatorial candidate  Meg Wilson, you hire someone from a reputable firm that pays a living wage and contributes to their social security and health benefits.

Which brings us to the issue of jobs. Not any job is a good job. If you’re contributing to the creation of a job that does not pay a living wage (a minimum wage is not enough because an individual can work full-time at a minimum wage job and still be living under the federal poverty line) please refrain from patting yourself on the back. Workers without health insurance working a strenuous job with sometimes toxic cleaning materials? All you’re likely to do is create more public costs when that worker gets sick.

graph from bbc

A major reason for this 21st century predicament is that our houses just keep getting bigger. The average American house size has more than doubled since the 1950s to 2,349 square feet. The bigger our houses get, the more we have to buy to fill them and the more effort it takes to clean them. Compare American homes to our friends across the pond: the average house in the UK is 818 square feet, in France it is 1,216 and in Denmark it’s 1,475.

If you’re determined to have a big house and crazy workload, get some help–but do it ethically. Here’s an article from MSN Money on how to hire a maid “the right way.” Better yet, if you live in SF check out La Colectiva, a cleaning co-op where the cleaners own the business. You can also look for a cleaning co-op in your area through WAGES (Women’s Action to Gain Economic Security) website.

Personally, I can’t say how I’ll feel in the future, but I just don’t feel comfortable having someone else clean my shit (literally). I’d rather live in a more modest home and work toward work/life balance…where part of that balance is finding time to scrub the oven.

So I’m going to learn how to clean. First stop: Real Simple Magazine’s Cleaning 101.

photo by kandyjaxx on flickr

More on the changing role of men and fathers–but this time with a scientific twist:

…new fathers everywhere were calibrating the state of their manhood after the release of a much-discussed study of 600 men that indicated that testosterone — the defining hormone of maleness — drops after a man becomes a father.

If that were not enough, the study seems to suggest that practice actually makes imperfect when it comes to the hours men spend in rearing children. It found that the more time a man spends each day, say, strapping Crocs onto his toddler’s feet or helping her off the monkey bars, the more the hormone flags. (“Fathers and the XX-Factor,” New York Times).

Cue freak out about loss of manlyness. My first reaction was ‘oh crap, now people are going to argue there is biological proof that I should get stuck with all the butt-wipping at 3 a.m.’ But then I read on:

“It’s a natural process,” Matt Schneider, a stay-at-home father of two young children who lives in Battery Park City in Manhattan, said of the testosterone dip reported in the study. The finding, he said, was unfortunately being interpreted by some “as a way to emasculate men, when really it should be used as a way to show us all that we’re meant to be part of the caregiving process.”

That, in fact, was a point that the study’s authors emphasized: a dip in testosterone does not mean a man is less virile. Rather, it seems to be nature’s way of slightly adjusting impulses, to make him less likely to stray once he has a family to look after, and more likely to focus on the tasks at hand.

Biology is an interesting thing. Our ideas about biology and how we make biological arguments about what is or is not appropriate for people to do is even more fascinating. While this study seems to support my personal view that men are just as capable of being caregivers as women–even biologically!–it raises the question of how important biology is in how we should live our lives. We’ve out-smarted biology in so many ways (think modern medicine), should we even care about biology anymore?

photo by Arbeiderpartiet on flickr.com

On Thursday, Danes put the Social Democrats, led by Helle Thorning-Schmidt, back in power after a decade of center-right government.

It’s the first-ever female Danish Prime Minister.

Schmidt and the Social Dems even appear to have a reasonable economic plan: a comibination of increasing taxes on banks and increasing the Danish work day by 12 minutes. Happily absent are austerity programs, which tend to disproportionately burden those individuals who can least afford to bear them, and more anti-immigration policies, which have been all the rage in Denmark but to little economic avail.

I’m just happy to see different political approaches–alternatives to America’s cut throat capitalism model–once again be taken seriously in Europe. But with 9.1% unemployment, a stagnant economy, 15% poverty rate, 49 million people without health insurance, and a lack of regulation which helped put us in this mess…I guess  enthusiasm for low-taxation/low-regulation is waning.

by phd comics

As my summer break comes to an end, I’ve begun to panic about the summer to-do list that never quite got done. It was a little ambitious considering I was also committed to enjoying a full six weeks of vacation (in Sweden; don’t worry, that’s normal there).

So in desperation and anticipation of a jam-packed fall quarter, I googled “time mangement.”  I stumbled upon this blog entry from an MIT post-doc. He’s written 3 books. One while finishing his dissertation. That is absurd.

Basically, his advice is:

• do only things that are necessary for you to achieve your larger goals (right, must decide on those)
• say no to everything else (but won’t people stop liking me?)
• make a schedule and stick to it (hmpf)

Here is a link to the full blog.

I found the suggestions helpful–especially the part about clarifying your goals–  though I suspect the productivity I’ve achieved today will be fleeting.

I’ve also signed up for a mindfulness meditation class at the Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA. Meditation has always sounded a bit frou-frou to me, but I’d like to finish my PhD before retirement age. Whatever helps.