Matthew C Klein, Columnist

Did Women's Lib Cause Rising Income Inequality?

A new study suggests that greater opportunities for intelligent women have made the income inequality numbers look worse.

January 28, 2014 at 10:11 PM UTC

By Matthew C Klein

Matthew C. Klein writes for Bloomberg View about the economy and financial markets. He previously wrote for the Economist magazine and its economics blog, Free Exchange. Before that, Klein was a research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he spent more than two years studying the history of the Federal Reserve and the intellectual history of monetary economics for an upcoming book by Sebastian Mallaby. He also worked at Bridgewater Associates, where he studied the economies of Central and Eastern Europe and advised institutional investors on asset-liability management. Klein has a bachelor's degree in history from Yale University. Originally from Chicago, he lives in New York.

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Birds of a feather flock together, so it shouldn't be surprising that, when given the choice, intelligent and successful women tend to marry intelligent and successful men.

But until recently, most women in the U.S. didn't have that choice. They had far fewer educational opportunities than men. Those who excelled academically often were unable to translate their accomplishments into remunerative careers: Only about 35 percent of women aged 25 to 54 worked outside the home in 1950, compared with about 75 percent now. Economists now tell us that this social progress is responsible for a significant portion of the rise in household income inequality.