Katherine Gallagher Robbins, Senior Policy Analyst

Katherine Gallagher Robbins

Katherine Gallagher Robbins is a Senior Policy Analyst for Family Economic Security at the National Women’s Law Center where she examines how tax and budget policies influence the financial stability and security of low-income women and families.  Before joining the Center in 2010, Ms. Gallagher Robbins worked as an organizer for the California Public Interest Research Group at the University of California, San Diego. She is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and a graduate of the College of William and Mary.

Expert in: Data on Poverty & Income, Poverty & Income Support
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My Take

House Passes Giveaway to Millionaires, Cuts Help for Poor and Middle Class Families

Posted by
Katherine Gallagher Robbins, Senior Policy Analyst
Reggie Oldak, Senior Counsel and Director of Government Relations
| Posted on: April 19, 2012 at 05:04 pm

Millionaires have had a very good week. Women and their families have had a very bad week.

It started Monday, when 45 Senators voted to block the "Paying a Fair Share Act" (S. 2230), which would have implemented the Buffett Rule by requiring households with incomes above $1 million to pay at least a 30 percent income tax rate. Tax revenues support programs vital to women and their families at every stage of their lives, and women pay the price when millionaires and billionaires avoid paying their fair share of taxes.

Today, the House passed "The Small Business Tax Cut Act" (H.R. 9). The bill provides a 20 percent tax deduction in 2012 for businesses with fewer than 500 employees — not exactly your mom-and-pop store!

H.R. 9 would have more aptly been named the Giveaway to Millionaires Act. The Tax Policy Center estimates that taxpayers making over $1 million a year would receive nearly half of the windfall. Exactly how big is this tax break? The average millionaire would get a new tax break of $44,635 next year. The average benefit for low-income tax payers in the bottom fifth of the income distribution? Just $2. All while adding $46 billion dollars to the deficit over the next ten years.

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Tags: Buffett Rule, Paying a Fair Share Act of 2012, Taxes, Federal Tax Policy, Tax & Budget | 4 comments

Want to Shrink the Wage Gap? Raise the Minimum Wage

Posted by
Abby Lane, Fellow
Anna McClure, Fellow
Katherine Gallagher Robbins, Senior Policy Analyst
| Posted on: April 18, 2012 at 03:20 pm

One of the questions we often get at NWLC is what policy makers can do to close the wage gap. In addition to steps like passing the Paycheck Fairness Act and combating punitive pay secrecy policies, one thing policy makers could do is to raise the minimum wage.

People rarely think about raising the minimum wage as a fair pay issue. But one of the reasons for the wage gap is women’s concentration in low-wage jobs. In fact, women make up about two-thirds of all minimum wage workers. So, raising the minimum wage would particularly boost women’s earnings.

Just a few weeks ago, Senator Harkin introduced the Rebuild America Act (S. 2252) which would gradually raise the minimum wage from $7.25 per to hour (a wage that leaves a mother with two kids working full time, year round, well below poverty) to $9.80 per hour over the next two-and-a-half years. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that this increase would benefit more than 28 million workers, nearly 55 percent of them women.

An analysis of state wage gaps provides additional evidence that a higher minimum wage can help close the wage gap. When you rank all of the states and the District of Columbia in terms of the wage gap, half of the top ten states with the smallest wage gap (giving DC honorary “state” status for this comparison) had minimum wages set at $8.00 per hour or above, including DC, Vermont, California, Nevada, and Massachusetts. And four of these five states, DC, VT, CA and NV, had the four narrowest wage gaps.

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Tags: Equal Pay and the Wage Gap, Employment | Add new comment

Why Fair Pay for Women Matters to My Husband

Posted by Katherine Gallagher Robbins, Senior Policy Analyst | Posted on: April 17, 2012 at 11:03 am

My husband, Michael, and I

Many people think of fair pay as a women’s issue but it is a men’s issue as well.

In 2009, wives earned more than their husbands in more than one-third of all married couples.

Until recently were part of this one-third. We’ve been married for nearly three years and for about half that time I’ve been the breadwinner in our family, contributing more financially than Michael.

In the spring of 2010, I was offered my position at the National Women’s Law Center. Michael encouraged me to take it, even though it meant us moving to a DC where he didn’t have a full-time position. For our first year-and-a-half in D.C., he worked part-time as a Research Assistant for a professor at the University of Michigan while completing his dissertation.

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Tags: Equal Pay, Wage Gap, Equal Pay and the Wage Gap, Employment | 1 comment

What Obstacles Do Women Still Face in the Economy? Join Us for a Chat with The Nation’s Bryce Covert Tuesday at 1pm ET

Posted by Katherine Gallagher Robbins, Senior Policy Analyst | Posted on: March 26, 2012 at 03:52 pm

On Tuesday from 1-2pm ET NWLC’s Vice President of Family Economic Security Joan Entmacher and I will be live chatting with The Nation’s Bryce Covert about what obstacles women still face in the economy. We’ll be talking about women dropping out of the labor force, being left behind in the recovery, receiving unfair pay, and other topics. Join us and bring your questions!

A few facts to get you thinking:

  1. Did you know that while women suffered 30 percent of the job loss during the recession, they’ve accounted less than 12 percent of the job growth in the recovery?
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Tags: Health Insurance, Health Insurance, Jobs, Recession, Unemployment, Wage Gap, Equal Pay and the Wage Gap, Data on Poverty & Income, Unemployment, Employment | 1 comment

A Few Gaps in Reasoning in New Takes on the Wage Gap

Posted by
Abby Lane, Fellow
Katherine Gallagher Robbins, Senior Policy Analyst
| Posted on: March 23, 2012 at 10:12 am

For the last decade, the wage gap for women has barely budged – the typical women who works full time, year round still only makes 77 cents for every dollar paid to her male counterpart. As highlighted by a recent Bloomberg Businessweek article, there is a gender wage gap in virtually all jobs. Out of 265 major occupations, women’s median salary only exceeded men’s in one – personal care workers. The wage gap also occurs at all education levels, after experience is taken into account, and it gets worse as women’s careers progress. All told, even when accounting for a number of factors that can be expected to impact wages, it still exists. In fact, recent research shows that more than 40 percent of the wage gap is still unexplained, even after considering educational background, occupation, industry, work experience, union status, and race.

Despite this evidence of persistent unfair pay, recent weeks have also seen two oddly optimistic articles about women’s earnings. Let’s see what they’re so excited about:

First, Anya Kamenetz tries to reconcile why women’s earnings haven’t increased while their levels of education have. She concludes that women’s earnings are falling behind because (1) they have kids, (2) they chose jobs that don’t pay well, and (3) they are not “bold” or assertive. The onus in her explanation falls for the most part on women themselves – though she notes the structural element of some of these pieces, her answer is largely about planning correctly and making different choices. Who knew it was so easy – women can just make different choices and they’ll be paid fairly! This answer ignores the fact that even women who aren’t mothers see a wage gap. It ignores the fact that “women’s” jobs pay less precisely because women chose them – because women’s work is devalued – and, as noted above, that women are paid less even when they do chose the same profession as men. It ignores the fact that women often get punished for being bold or assertive. And the idea that these women might face discrimination? Not even mentioned.

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Tags: Employment, Equal Pay, Wage Gap, Women in the Workplace, Equal Pay and the Wage Gap, Pregnancy, Parenting, and the Workplace, Employment | Add new comment