March 9th, 2020

Is Seattle caught in the "2-income trap"?

Recently, Seattle has been coping with the threat of a mass outbreak of the coronavirus. Their public health officials have begun issuing encouragements to work from home and avoid large gatherings. Nevertheless as Tim Carney points out, the public school authorities have declined to close the schools. Carney wonders whether families with a stay-at-home parent would be able to cope with extreme events such as coronavirus better than those where both parents work.

Carney's political alignment is with the right, but his point is not partisan. Elizabeth Warren's 2003 book "The Two-Income Trap" discusses the ways that households (with and without children) can be paradoxically stronger by doing less - because this gives them more flexibility to "ramp up" and do more during times of crisis. If the members of a household are already working as hard/earning as much as they can, then when times get rough they don't have any practical way to respond to their new challenges.

Just as Warren's book was met with much criticism, similar objections can be made to Carney's point. There is no one-size-fits-all recipe for supporting or raising a family. A household's decision might make everyone better off, but disadvantage that household itself (a collective action problem). And perhaps most importantly, there are ideals which one can praise, but can be in practice make starting a family seem unattainable, leading to a lower rate of family formation exactly in times when we hope to encourage it.

Sincerely,
David Smedberg