- Closing the pay gap in Pennsylvania, By Ann Belser, August 6, 2010, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: “Women in Pennsylvania make nearly 21 cents on the dollar less than men in the state. It’s a gap that is slightly greater than the U.S. as a whole, in which women earn 80.2 cents for every dollar men make, according to a report released Thursday by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. That gap is even greater in Pittsburgh, according to a study by the locally based Women and Girls Foundation. Elizabeth Waikman, a spokeswoman for the Women and Girls Foundation, said just three years ago, when the foundation held its first Equal Pay Day rally, women earned 70 cents for every dollar men earned; that has risen to 74 cents…”
- Women make strides, but still trail men in wage comparisons, By James Haggerty, August 6, 2010, Scranton Times Tribune: “Average working women in Pennsylvania continue to earn less than 80 cents on every dollar of income for their male counterparts. New data from the U.S. Department of Labor show full-time female workers in the state in 2009 had average median weekly earnings of $654, which is 79 percent of the $825 median average for males. ‘Women have been talking about pay equity since they started talking about suffrage,’ said Elizabeth Randol, Ph.D., director of the regional Women and Money Project for the state treasurer’s office. ‘This is a very clear way of seeing what the lingering impacts are of institutional differences and the way women are treated in the work force.’ Women have made gains to close the gap in recent years, statistics show, but the disparity has a ripple effect surfacing in poverty numbers…”
Day: August 6, 2010
Lifeline Cellular Phone Program
Federal program buys cell phones for the poor, By Scott Canon, July 30, 2010, Kansas City Star: “A cell phone in every pocket. And for growing numbers, it’s free. ‘It’s a sign of the times,’ said Nicholas Eberstadt, a researcher at the conservative American Enterprise Institute and author of ‘The Poverty of ‘The Poverty Rate.” ‘When does a luxury become an absolute bare necessity?’ Roughly one in 10 American households qualifies for a direct phone subsidy. In a fast-growing number of states, including Missouri, that equates to a free cell phone. It is both news and history – the extension of longstanding telephone subsidies for the poor, and cell carriers taking advantage of virtually guaranteed profits. While cell companies see the federal Lifeline program as a way to scoop up hundreds of millions of dollars in business, the move has raised questions about the way Americans subsidize each other’s phone service. More than 2 million poor people have been given free handsets and prepaid cell service – albeit on the simplest of phones, often with barely an hour’s talk time per month – as wireless carriers scramble for a toehold with a new class of customers…”