According to Investopedia, skrinkflation “is the practice of reducing the size of a product while maintaining its sticker price. Raising the price per given amount is a strategy employed by companies, mainly in the food and beverage industries, to stealthily boost profit margins.”
We experience this every day when we look at products we’ve bought for years and become suspicious that they’re getting smaller. Easter candy hoarder and actor, B.J. Novak, (“The Office,” “Inglorious Basterds”), noticed something fishy about the size of Cadbury Eggs and brought them to Conan O’Brien’s attention back in 2007 in this hilarious clip.
Several Danish policies are intended to help mothers stay employed.
For example, subsidized child care is available for all children from 6 months of age until they can attend elementary school. Parents pay no more than 25% of its cost.
Using administrative data from Statistics Denmark, a government agency that collects and compiles national statistics, we studied the long-term effects of motherhood on income for 104,361 Danish women. They were born in the early 1960s and became mothers for the first time when they were 20-35 years old.
They all became mothers by 2000, making it possible to observe how their earnings unfolded for decades after their first child was born. While the Danish government’s policies changed over those years, paid parental leave and child allowances and other benefits were in place throughout. The women were, on average, age 26 when they became mothers for the first time, and 85% had more than one child.
We estimated that motherhood led to a loss of about the equivalent of US$9,000 in women’s earnings – which we measured in inflation-adjusted 2022 U.S. dollars – in the year they gave birth to or adopted their first child, compared with what we would expect if they had remained childless. While the motherhood penalty got smaller as their children got older, it was long-lasting.
The penalty only fully disappeared 19 years after the women became moms. Motherhood also led to a long-term decrease in the number of the hours they worked.
We estimated that motherhood cost the average Danish woman a total of about $120,000 in earnings over the first 20 years after they first had children – about 12% of the money they would have earned over those two decades had they remained childless.
Most of the mothers in our study who were employed before giving birth were eligible for four weeks of paid leave before giving birth and 24 weeks afterward. They could share up to 10 weeks of their paid leave with the baby’s father. The length and size of this benefit has changed over the years.
The Danish government also offers child benefits – payments made to parents of children under 18. These benefits are sometimes called a “child allowance.”
Denmark has other policies, like housing allowances, that are available to all Danes, but are more generous for parents with children living at home.
Using the same data, Christensen and I next estimated how motherhood affects how much money Danish moms receive from the government. We wanted to know whether they get enough income from the government to compensate for their loss of income from their paid work.
We found that motherhood leads to immediate increases in Danish moms’ government benefits. In the year they first gave birth to or adopted a child, women received over $7,000 more from the government than if they had remained childless. That money didn’t fully offset their lost earnings, but it made a substantial dent.
The gap between the money that mothers received from the government, compared with what they would have received if they remained childless, faded in the years following their first birth or adoption. But we detected a long-term bump in income from government benefits for mothers – even 20 years after they first become mothers.
Cumulatively, we determined that the Danish government offset about 80% of the motherhood earnings penalty for the women we studied. While mothers lost about $120,000 in earnings compared with childless women over the two decades after becoming a mother, they gained about $100,000 in government benefits, so their total income loss was only about $20,000.
Benefits for parents of older kids
Our findings show that government benefits do not fully offset earnings losses for Danish moms. But they help a lot.
Because most countries provide less generous parental benefits, Denmark is not a representative case. It is instead a test case that shows what’s possible when governments make financially supporting parents a high priority.
That is, strong financial support for mothers from the government can make motherhood more affordable and promote gender equality in economic resources.
Because the motherhood penalty is largest at the beginning, government benefits targeted to moms with infants, such as paid parental leave, may be especially valuable.
The motherhood penalty’s long-term nature, however, indicates that these short-term benefits are not enough to get rid of it altogether. Benefits that are available to all mothers of children under 18, such as child allowances, can help offset the long-term motherhood penalty for mothers of older children.
Each year on the holiday that bears his name, Martin Luther King Jr. is remembered for his immense contributions to the struggle for racial equality. What is less often remembered but equally important is that King saw the fight for racial equality as deeply intertwined with economic justice.
To address inequality – and out of growing concern for how automation might displace workers – King became an early advocate for universal basic income. Under universal basic income, the government provides direct cash payments to all citizens to help them afford life’s expenses.
In recent years, more than a dozen U.S. cities have run universal basic income programs, often smaller or pilot programs that have offered guaranteed basic incomes to select groups of needy residents. As politicalscientists, we have followed these experiments closely.
One of us recently co-authored a study which found that universal basic income is generally popular. In two out of three surveys analyzed, majorities of white Americans supported a universal basic income proposal. Support is particularly high among those with low incomes.
King’s intuition was that white people with lower incomes would support this type of policy because they could also benefit from it. In 1967, King argued, “It seems to me that the Civil Rights Movement must now begin to organize for the guaranteed annual income … which I believe will go a long, long way toward dealing with the Negro’s economic problem and the economic problem with many other poor people confronting our nation.”
But there is one notable group that does not support universal basic income: those with higher levels of racial resentment. Racial resentment is a scale that social scientists have used to describe and measure anti-Black prejudice since the 1980s.
Economic self-interest can trump resentment
At the same time, the results of the study also suggest that coalition building is possible, even among the racially resentful.
Economic status matters. Racially resentful whites with lower incomes tend to be supportive of universal basic income. In short, self-interest seems to trump racial resentment. This is consistent with King’s idea of how an economic coalition could be built and pave the way toward racial progress.
As mayor of Stockton, Calif., Michael Tubbs ran a pioneering program that provided a basic income to a limited number of residents. Rich Pedroncelli/AP
Income is not the only thing that shapes attitudes, however. Some of the strongest supporters of universal basic income are those who have higher incomes but low levels of racial resentment. This suggests an opportunity to build coalitions across economic lines, something King believed was necessary. “The rich must not ignore the poor,” he argued in his Nobel Peace Prize lecture, “because both rich and poor are tied in a single garment of destiny.” Our data shows that this is possible.
This approach to coalition building is also suggested by our earlier research. Using American National Election Studies surveys from 2004-2016, we found that for white Americans, racial resentment predicted lower support for social welfare policies. But we also found that economic position mattered, too.
Economic need can unite white Americans in support of more generous welfare policies, including among some who are racially prejudiced. At a minimum, this suggests that racial resentment does not necessarily prevent white Americans from supporting policies that would also benefit Black Americans.
Building lasting coalitions
During his career as an activist in the 1950s and 1960s, King struggled with building long-term, multiracial coalitions. He understood that many forms of racial prejudice could undermine his work. He therefore sought strategies that could forge alliances across lines of difference. He helped build coalitions of poor and working-class Americans, including those who are white. He was not so naive as to think that shared economic progress would eliminate racial prejudice, but he saw it as a place to start.
Martin Luther King Jr. believed Americans of different racial backgrounds could coalesce around shared economic interests. AP
Racial prejudice continues to fuel opposition to universal basic income, as well as other forms of social welfare. But our research suggests that this is not insurmountable.
As King knew, progress toward economic equality is not inevitable. But, as his legacy reminds us, progress does remain possible through organizing around shared interests.
The economy is such that many this holiday season are spending less on presents for their loved ones. This has caused an upswing in people choosing to go to secondhand stores and thrift shops to buy Christmas gifts. One would think that giving someone else a “used” gift would be seen as a pretty thoughtless purchase, but new research says secondhand gifts are more thoughtful than previously perceived, whether it’s for the holidays or not.
Research from a study conducted by the University of Eastern Finland found that most secondhand gifts are purchased with more thoughtfulness and intention than newer, more impulsive purchases. They also found that, aside from the better prices, the rise in thrifting for gifts is also due to people valuing the environment and wishing to support small businesses. In these less-popular places, many are finding unique treasures they couldn’t find anywhere else.
“Our findings indicate that buying second-hand gifts is a well-thought-through decision rather than an impulsive one. It involves the same motive – intention – behavior chain as when buying a new product,” said Assistant Professor Heli Hallikainen.
“Consumer-to-consumer buying and selling is growing in popularity. This leads to an increasingly diverse selection of products available, with advanced C2C platforms making it easy to find items one is looking for,” stated study co-author Maria Ovaska, MSc (Economics and Business Administration).
Many people are seeing the value of thrifting holiday gifts, especially Gen Z shoppers. Not only is there a certain chicness in buying secondhand, but there’s indeed more intention and thought behind it.
Buying a new gift at a regular store or online shop just takes a quick, simple click of the “Add to cart” button. If you mess up the order, your recipient can return it to get the same shirt in a different size. After all, the store likely has multiple versions of the shirt in their stock.
By comparison, getting a nice, previously owned gift from a thrift store requires more time and discernment. You have to ensure the item is a good fit, literally and figuratively depending on what you find, because you likely won’t be able to return it. It could also be a one-of-a-kind item that can’t and won’t be found anywhere else. Buying a new item says, “I got you this for you;” buying a thrifted item says, “I saw this and thought of you specifically.”
Christmas shopping at a thrift shop can bring new memories out of someone’s old treasures. You never know what you’ll find, but your loved ones will be happy you thought about them and what they’d like so deeply. After all, it is the thought that counts.
