Who costs government more, women or men? Is it more in proportion to the amount they are taxed?
A tax based on gender? I’m sure that’d go over great (that’s a joke for the sarcasm impaired).
At a guess I’d say men cost the government more. Significantly more.
The biggest cost would probably come from jails. I don’t know the exact statistics but I’m reasonably certain men far outnumber women in jail.
In addition there is the reason so many men are in jail…men commit more crimes. So, there is the social cost to keeping more police than you might have to in addition to secondary costs such as removing a tax payer from the workforce because the criminal killed or severly injured their victim.
About the only mitigating factor where women may be considered to cost more is they live longer. As a result they collect Social Security longer and tap into Medicare and what not longer. Still, I’d be surprised if this put a significant dent in the costs I listed for men.
True, although women tend to earn less money (so they contribute less government revenue to offset their expenses) and get more government support from programs such as WIC. Still, considering how much it costs to keep someone in jail, men are probably still ahead on this one.
I did not suggest that a pole tax be levied, but someone i discussed this with has argued that men pay more in taxes an so they don’t really cost the government more. That is why the two part question.
Without wishing to suggest an answer either way, I’d like to point out the following:
Jeff said that women live longer than men. This is true. Also true is that women have higher morbidity rates than men at all ages. Morbidity is the rate at which people contract serious diseases.
regards,
pan
Wow, this is gonna get sticky. Do we examine all government expenses and break them down by gender percentages? For example, business and political decisions can end up costing the gov’t. bunches of money (as in the S&L bailout), so do we say that that was mostly money spent on men because most of the decision-makers were male? Do we prorate the amounts depending on the percentage of women involved? Would we say that 93.7%, say, of the costs of the Gulf War represent “money spent on men”? Ai-yi-yi! “Halp, halp, my powerful brain is blowed itself up!”
I don’t think we’re gonna get a very meaningful answer to this question, folks.
What kabbes said about morbidity rates may be true…I don’t know. What I am fairly certain of is that even if women have a higher death rate across all ages it doesn’t get enough of them in the end to push what I said the other way. Simply walk into any communal senior citizen’s facility and count the men and women. Women FAR outnumber the men.
Perhaps the morbidity rate for women is mitigated by a higher percentage of female to male births. IIRC females slightly outnumber men in the US and birth rate (although I think it’s close at something like 49.6% men to 50.4% women).
Just a clarification: morbidity rate is not the same thing as mortality rate.
Thanks Kimstu…I knew something about that was tickling my bogus alarm.
I also think Kimstu is right that we’re unlikely to get meaningful answers on this one. This might make a good thesis topic for your PhD but it’s probably beyond our scope to answer here.
lee said:
I just have to say, this is the best pun I’ve heard all day. 
Jeff - mortality rates are actually higher for men at all ages - that’s why old folks homes are full of women, as you say.
Morbidity rates are higher for women at all ages (God evening up the score?). This increases further the cost of women against men, at least in the UK where we have the NHS. Sicker women, living longer.
regards,
pan
ps couldn’t agree more about the “pole tax” pun - genious.
I have to wonder how much the tendency of the medical profession to write off women’s symptoms as “hysteria” or “nerves” contributes to increased morbidity in women. Men get treated; women get lectured.
Let’s also not forget that women are more likely to have no or inadequate access to health care.
Well we need to clarify are we talking net or gross costs, because men almost certainly contribute more to the tax base.
There is actually a book written on this by a feminist. The name escapes me. But she wanted a higher tax rate on men because they cost society so much.
IF we are measuring financial impact, I think we have to look at a whole bunch of factors. Clearly men cost more because of Jail. Minority men cost even more.
But men also contribute more financially. I would look at some of the great drivers of our economy: computers, the auto industry, etc. I will wager that a lot more men started the industry driving our nation than the men. An how about the ratio of men’s patents to women’s?
And of course, it is very difficult to measure the benefit of all of the women who raised productive children, kept families together, stopped their men folk from commiting crimes, etc.
I would say that it is a wash. Who will ever know for sure?
whoops. I meant more men start ing industry than *women[/]
There’s been a few good articles recently in the financial press about why there aren’t many women-run startups, actually. The general conclusion seems to be that women are less willing than men to ask VCs for money, and that VCs are less willing to give money to women than to men.
I’m sure I don’t need to tell you this but for the record I’d take that book by the feminist with a LARGE grain of salt. If the woman in question was indeed a feminist and we assume that she is of a more militant school of feminism then we can also assume she had an agenda to service making her conclusions suspect.
Granted I’m making a lot of assumptions here but reading between the lines of your post this seemed to be indicated.
Also, while men may pay more in taxes and have more patents and what-not this gap is closing. It still has a ways to go yet but clearly women are contributing more in direct taxes now than they did 30 years ago. And to reiterate what Mr.Zambezi said…what value do you place on a stay-at-home mom who raises her kids so they become functioning members of society rather than a burden?
Jeff, it was a book on the sales rack at Barnes and Noble. I just skimmed the dust jacket. It seemed that she was very serious.
While the gender gap in income, invention, entrepreneurship, etc. is narrowing (and rightly so) sadly, the gender gap in jail is doing the same. There may be some cosmic connection there.
If we really cared that much who cost the government more, and wanted to levy taxes appropriately, we’d just cut out all services that have any direct benefit, and have government only provide those services which benefit everyone equally, like national defense.
Of course, this would cut out things all forms of poor relief and in fact all forms of government aid whatsoever. We could even deal with the problem of criminals by levying the cost of apprehending the criminal against everyone who lives within a ten-mile radius of the criminal (since they’re the ones who benefit most from the criminal’s apprehension). Would you mind terribly if the police only enforced the law if you paid them first?
Kelly
Another ambiguity is whether we are talking about the Federal Government or government in general. The Federal Government really doesn’t have many prisons. The two largest expenditures, IIRC, are military and Social Security. The military exists to benfit everyone, but SS exists to benefit the old, of which women are a disproportinate number. Of course, one could argue that SS exists to benefit everyone, since it reduces the burden on people with poor parents, but if you’re going to go by that logic pretty much everything exists to benefit everyone, and this question is meaningless. As for the jails issue: why is it that when it is reported that males are a disproportionate percentage of those in jail, people automatically conclude that this is solely because males commit more crimes, but when it is reported that blacks are a disproportionate percentage of those in jail, it is conventional wisdom that that at least some of this is due to racism, not just due to blacks committing more crimes?