SHOULD ECONOMISTS listen to what people say?

Lots of interesting discussion in the comments, including this: “I’m a stay-at-home mom with three small kids. My husband’s income is quite good, but not amazing (especially since we live in an expensive state and have three children.) My MTR is about 45%. Between that and day care I would have to make about $70,000 a year before I would take home $1. Not worth it. So I’m home with the kids. BTW, I’ve had this conversation with many many SAHMs around here and almost all of them are home because of this. Now it turns out I like being home and probably wouldn’t go back anyway now, but that’s not true of many people I’ve talked to. Ironically, with the rise of assortative mating, its often the highly educated, accomplished women who marry men with high enough incomes to put them in this predicament, so we’re probably selecting for the drop out of some of our most productive workers.”