Sean Kershaw's Weblog
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September 1, 2006
Sloppy statistics and sloppy policy
It's a huge pet peeve of mine when the press and other experts use statistics in a really sloppy way to highlight a policy issue -- and end up making policy interpretations impossible in the process. (I plan to comment on this regularly.)
Latest offense: Tuesday's edition of Marketplace, which I love, reported shockingly on new Census data that shows women make just 77% of what men make.
So what. This statistic, as reported, is meaningless.
- Are women making just 77% of what men make for the same work and job titles? This is how they made it sound, and is the worst news imaginable, but we don't know because of how it was reported.
- Are women choosing fields that pay less for the same hours worked? The policy implications here are very different. Do we continue to reward "women's work" less? Will this trend change as women become a majority of college grads. Again: who knows?
- Are women choosing to work fewer hours? Is this because of family decisions? Again: who knows.
I understand if the answers are not available to reporters, but they should say so. This fuels a policy-sloppiness that is bad for all of us, and make policy more confusing than it actually is.
Posted by Sean Kershaw at September 1, 2006 7:33 AM
Comments
Thanks Todd. You are great at this.
Think more about how we can be both a "prod" at the CL, and a source of better information for our members and the public.
I'm going to keep this category going, but I'm not sure how to make it more constructive.
Posted by: Sean | September 5, 2006 8:03 AM
If memory serves, there's a journalism text entitled "How to Lie with Statistics." Perhaps we ought to pen a companion volume on How to Ruin Sexy News Pegs by Asking Pesky Questions About Statistics.
The DC-based nonprofit Economic Policy Institute issued an interesting, short release on this noting that the trumpeted narrowing of the wage disparity was actually the result of a dip in earnings by men: "Following current earnings trends, the Figure projects what more 'good news' of this sort would bring in the decades ahead," EPI reported. "It turns out the gender gap would completely close in 2024, when earnings for full-time, full-year workers would be just under $25,000—40 percent below today's level for men and 22 percent for women."
Being a sworn Luddite I have no idea how to put a hyperlink into a blog comment, so here's a nice old-fashioned URL: http://www.epi.org/content.cfm?id=2486
Posted by: Beth Hawkins | September 14, 2006 2:06 PM