http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2008/09/fun-with-statistics.html
Mankiw is unpersuaded by Blinder's argument that Dem presidents are better for the U.S. economy. To show how fair he is, he juxtaposes Blinder's article (NYT) to that of Mulligan's (WSJ), the latter arguing that Republicans are better for gender equity. Since both of them only show "correlation" -- and "correlation" doesn't imply "causation" -- Mankiw discards both cases. In and by itself, the argument that correlation is not causation is pretty inept, since correlation doesn't exclude causation either -- and it does suggest it. But whatever. I won't defend Blinder's. Now, re. Mulligan's piece, Mankiw has a good reason to be skeptical. This is why. You can take CB data and see that, indeed, Dem administrations coincide with an increase in male to female income. But that's because *across the board* higher income (e.g. higher *average* income) is strongly associated with an increase in gaps. In other words, the reason why the gap grew during Dems is because families could afford one spouse (typically the wife) staying at home. How is it bad for families to have *the opportunity* to keep one spouse at home if they can afford it, compared to the alternative (having both to work because one income isn't enough)? I'm not saying that it's good (or bad) that wives stay at home, just that it's better to have the chance for one spouse to stay home if one income is enough and the "leisure" thus obtained more than compensates for the foregone individual income. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
