Gender pay gap starts at home with kids’ allowance, data show
You can bet your bottom dollar that the gender pay gap starts long before men and women enter the workplace, according to a new report.
Data collected by the allowance app BusyKid shows that boys earn twice as much for doing household chores each week than girls, with parents granting their sons a weekly average of $13.80 and their daughters just $6.71.
BusyKid — which helps parents dole out allowances that kids can save, spend, share or invest — found that boys were also given more opportunities to earn cash by their parents and were more likely to save their hard-earned dollars.
Girls, meanwhile, were more generous and donated an average of $2 more per week to charity.
The company also found, based on data from 10,000 families, that boys were given an average bonus of $17.01 — just over a full dollar more than their female counterparts, who were given just $15.54.
The disparity is in line with the pay gap for kids’ adult counterparts in the workforce — women earn about 82 cents for every dollar a man makes, according to the Census Bureau.
BusyKid CEO Gregg Murset said that the extreme, and surprisingly early, discrepancy between boys and girls likely isn’t intentional, but serves as an eye-opener for parents.
“As a father of both boys and girls, I think this is an important wake-up call for parents to be cognizant of what they are paying to make sure they are being as fair as possible,” he said. “I don’t think any parent would intentionally pay differently based on gender, but clearly, it’s happening.”
Murset told CNN that the most likely explanation for the allowance wage gap has to do with different chores coming with a different price tag — and more arduous jobs, such as mowing the lawn, are often given to boys over girls.
“Harder jobs typically require a little bit more pay. If you’re going to mow a lawn for three hours, that’s a beast, a tough job,” he said. “Maybe us, as parents, are giving our girls chores in the house that don’t take two or three hours outside, and there’s a difference in the pay scale.”