No valid source for "women own/control/influence" x% of wealth.

[Cerridwen]

'Valid' is used in this instance as defined in the #2 definition of the second definition.

I did some searching and couldn't trace to a source for this assertion. I did find an article at the wsj by "The Numbers Guy" who also couldn't find a source for this 20 year old adage.

<snip>

For at least two decades, this number has been a fixture of news articles, marketing websites and books about consumer behavior. And as with many oft-repeated statistics, no one is sure where it originated.

<snip>

In addition to having murky origins, the number appear to be wrong. Several recent surveys suggest that men have nearly equal say on spending, and that when men and women live together, both participate in spending decisions. In a survey conducted last year of nearly 4,000 Americans 16 and older by Futures Co., a London consulting firm, just 37% of women said they have primary responsibility for shopping decisions in their household, while 85% said they have primary or shared responsibility. The respective figures for men were similar: 31% and 84%.

<snip to end of article>

Researchers say so many judgments and emotions go into consumer purchases that it likely isn't possible to measure who makes which household spending decisions.

"{80%} is not a credible figure," says Esther Duflo, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies consumer behavior. "There just is not one. How would you possibly estimate it?"

The woman who is often mentioned as the "source" for the numbers, CEO of TrendSight Group, Marti Barletta, has a rather long and arduous blog post describing how she came to to use the 80% figure in 1999 "although there was no primary source for it, it was consistent with the "gestalt" of numbers we did have sources for..." TrendSight group is a marketing strategy firm specializing in marketing based on gender.

This reminds me a lot of the "commonly known fact" that "A woman over age 40 has a better chance of being killed by a terrorist than of getting married. "

As Mark Twain said, "It's not what you don't know that kills you, it's what you know for sure that ain't true."

Fortunately, this particular adage doesn't have deadly consequences, unless you're in the marketing business.

[Squinch]

1. Good find!

[Cerridwen]

3. Thank you.

This kind of thing makes my teeth itch.

The media, i.e., news sources, publishers, etc., get away with the most egregious lies.

[Egalitarian Thug]

2. Uh oh, I don't think this is going to be well received...

& R

[Cerridwen]

4. I'm not sure why. I know it may not receive

a lot of attention.

It took several years for that idiocy about women over 40 to finally disappear. Again Mark Twain comes to mind; "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."

edit for wrong word use.

[Egalitarian Thug]

7. The lies have so many more supporters than the truth. Lies make you feel justified,

or at least no worse than others, in being a rotten person, and lies can make you money.

Truth OTOH, not so much. It has an unfortunately tendency to just sit there being the truth and pointing out our hypocrisy, our greed, our failures, all the stuff we like to ignore about ourselves.

[Nine]

5. Why do you hate men? ;-)

Just kidding, of course.

[Cerridwen]

6. :)

I hate lies. I hate the media getting away with lying.

I want a "well informed populace." I have to share space with them. I'm selfish that way.

[Squinch]

9. .

[myrna minx]

8. Thank you. K&R

[Cerridwen]

11. Thank you for the K & R.

Much appreciated.

[ismnotwasm]

10. Nice!

[Cerridwen]

12. Thanks.

[Starry Messenger]

13. k&r

[lumberjack_jeff]

14. The irony of this statistic is that it was uncontroversial when being used in a "girl power" sense

as in "Rush Limbaugh! Sense the power of our collective anger!"

Then you begin to see it used (apparently seriously) in contexts like this: "Women control 60% of the wealth? When will men stop oppressing us?"

I think it's reasonable for readers to see that and have a bit of a "hold up there" reaction. At that point it apparently became "MRA bullshit".

I don't know where 60%, 70% or 80% come from. My guess is they were pulled out of various ad executive's asses to justify an ad campaign for products like chick beer.

So, based on a link provided by Hfojvt to the census bureau, I crunched the numbers they collected (number of male, female and married households, the percentage of which are within various tiers of wealth and the average wealth within that tier), and it indicates that, rounded to three significant digits, women control 51.9% of the wealth.

There are probably a bunch of ways of computing a result. The census bureau is the one I used.

So, 60% is wrong. "Most" is not.

Does that shoot a large enough hole in marketing executives arguments to get them to stop selling trucks painted "mango tango pearl"? I hope so.

[lumberjack_jeff]

15. Kicking 'cuz math is hard. n/t

[kcr]

16. Apparently it's also hard being wrong n/t