You know the statement "Women own 60% of US wealth" is just MRA idiocy, right? [View all]

[Squinch]

“Women own 60% of the nation’s wealth.”

I see this obviously ridiculous statement often, even here on DU. It is usually used to support a claim that women are no longer at a financial disadvantage to men, and should therefore just quit their damn complainin’. (for example, see responses here: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20101225112850AAqpcMx)

But a stroll through the interwebs shows this idea to be just a silly urban myth with no statistical support, and with many different versions, depending on who is talking.

Some sources, dating from 2005 to 2007 said that women WOULD own 60% of the wealth by 2030 if a certain set of unlikely events occurred. Some sources said they would own 60% of the wealth by 2025, some said women already own that much of the wealth of Great Britain, but, again, no sources backed up the information. Many said “a new study shows that women own 60% of the nation’s wealth” but none of these identified the study.

Here’s a thread from an MRA discussion board from 2007 where a poster asks the question “where did the claim that women own 60% of the nation’s wealth originate?” He asks because he made the claim on a website and was being required to back it up. All the poor MRA dears looked and looked, but they couldn’t find any source for the claim. http://antimisandry.com/chit-chat-main/i-need-proof-women-own-more-wealth-north-america-3522.html

Many of the references to the “statistic” were worded to say that women “control” most of the wealth, which led me to what I think is the true origin of the myth:

It is a fact that women make about 60% of CONSUMER SPENDING decisions in the US (about 4.3 trillion) according to advertising industry information and government data. Which means that women usually buy the clothes, the groceries, the household services, and are usually the decision makers on furniture and appliances purchases, etc.

But saying that women are responsible for 60% of household spending decisions is a far cry from proving that women control or own 60% of the wealth in the country. After all, women probably made most of the household spending decisions in 1955, too, and no one is stupid enough to say that is proof that women in 1955 owned most of the nation’s wealth.

Here is a summary of another possible source. It has some statistics that might be the ones being tortured in order to come up with the idea that women have 60% of the wealth. http://www.immersionactive.com/resources/50-plus-facts-and-fiction/ The thinking seems to be that baby boomers own about 60% of the nation’s wealth and women outlive men by an average of 5 years, so therefore someday all the baby boom men will die at the same time, and the baby boom women will own all of that 60%... or something... Which is patently ridiculous on too many fronts to count.

Here are some actual facts: in 2012, women still made 77 cents per dollar made by men. Women still vastly outnumber men in the poorest segments of our society, women are greatly under-represented in the wealthiest segments of society, and women are far less likely than men to have retirement savings, thus women are more likely to face destitution in their old age.

So isn’t it time we tossed this idiotic MRA talking point into the trash?