Thought this was interesting

Water Cooler
#1

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/13/world/europe/13iht-letter13.html?_r=3&smid=pl-share

"Today, across the member countries of the O.E.C.D., 40 percent of couples in which both partners work belong to the same or a neighboring earnings bracket, compared with 33 percent two decades ago, a 2011 report by the agency shows. Nearly two-thirds of couples have the same level of educational attainment (in 15 percent of the cases, the wife is more educated than her husband).

Doctors used to marry nurses. Now doctors marry doctors.

So while husbands and wives have become more equal, inequality between families appears to be on the rise. As Christine R. Schwartz, a professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin, puts it: “Marriages are increasingly likely to consist of two high- or two low-earning partners,” rather than of one of each."

#2

I think the driver for this is rising womens income. As women get wealthier, they will want to marry within their own economic status, so a female doctor won’t be marrying someone more middle class.

#3

Yep (this is interesting, and we are becoming more equal within families and more unequal between families)

#4

If only those women had stayed in the kitchen. Then we wouldn’t have all these inequality problems.

#5

I sort of got bored toward the end of the article, but it seemed like they were starting to try to argue that despite the numbers and common sense, this didn’t really contribute to income inequality.

#6

I didn’t even realize there was a second page till you said that. haha, whoops.