The Double Tax: How Women of Color Are Overcharged and Underpaid

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1:27IBM. Roam tomorrow. Join now at Sinesta.com. Terms and conditions apply. Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News. This is Bloomberg Businessweek with Carol Masser and Tim Stenevek on Bloomberg Radio. Anna Giftiopuku-Ajaman has receipts and she's used them to write a book. She's the author of The Double Tax, How Women of Color Are Overcharged and Underpaid. She's an author. She's an economist. She's a researcher at Harvard's Kennedy School. She joins us here in the Bloomberg Interactive Brokers Studio. Also with us is Nora Melinda. She's Bloomberg Television Markets correspondent. She joins us here in the Bloomberg Interactive Brokers Studio as well.

2:11Welcome. Congratulations on the book.

2:13Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman:Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here. Such an honor. You know, I think a lot of us are familiar, especially in recent years, with the so-called pink tax, the idea that women pay more for certain items. Yeah, that's right. Amen. We've talked about this a lot. Amen, right? Exactly. What is the double tax? So the double tax is essentially the pink tax and then some, right? So there are women who experience taxes on top of the pink tax. You're not just worried about finding the right beauty products in the store, but sometimes when you go to the store, those beauty products might not even exist.

2:44Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman:So you have to travel further for those products. So I'll give you an example. I use hair products that essentially are sold in stores in the Cambridge area that are about 45 minutes away from my house. So that additional tax is me having to drive 45 minutes on top of getting to the store and maybe or maybe not seeing the products that are on their shelves. Why? Why do you think this happens in society? Listen, there's a lot of reasons, right? But I think that it really boils down to certain. Because, Anna, what I always think, you're an economist at heart. That's right. And I just think about that, you know, people look at markets and opportunities.

3:21That's right. And if you see a big swath of the population that is going to use a product, you would think you would want to make it easier for them to access. Listen.

3:30Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman:See, you're being too logical. You know what I'm saying? Could you tell me? Listen. But it really does boil down to that, right? You don't understand. So then why isn't it? If we just look at numbers and markets and things, you know, you go for it. I would say that the numbers actually don't explain why this isn't happening, right? There's clearly a demand that's taking place. And we also know that this is costly. If we're talking about things like child care, which I'm happy to get more into. We talk about that a lot. This idea of making it more costly to raise kids that you want me to have. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

4:07Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman:And so I think what this book does is highlights those barriers and says, look, this is a problem. And if we don't address it, this becomes an economic crisis. That's right. Well, who benefits exactly from this pricing structure? I would say the systems that want to profit off of our insecurities as women. Right. So you are making me feel worse off as a mother, worse off as a sister, a daughter. And so you are sort of designing a profit structure around the way I see myself maybe failing in certain areas of my life. And so I'm making money off of that. not necessarily trying to uphold systems that maybe uplift you or uplift your community and i think that individuals who have that sort of mindset oftentimes are not thinking well into the future which i think is going to be led quite a bit by women right and how we're going to essentially determine sort of the economic circumstances of a lot of communities just because a lot of communities rely on us how do you do research for this as an economist i mean the different data that you the data well the data set that you look at um a lot of the data that we get that we rely on comes from the government.

5:17Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman:Shout out to the data that y 'all get. Well, we do. I mean, when the government's open, we get better data. Right. That's right. Or is the data not there? And we use alternative data. That's my question. Like how, you know, anecdotes are one thing, but you have to have the data. The data is absolutely key to this. And I think the reason why this book was even able to be written is because so many people over the past few decades have done empirical research that brings together the data. So we have a mix of causal evidence, descriptive evidence, right? But then of course we brought in some anecdotal evidence.

5:48Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman:I do think that qualitative research, I know I'm in a quantitative wheelhouse, right? Yeah. Doesn't get a whole lot of love, but it should because it's also giving us a sense of mechanisms. We see things that are happening in the data trend wise, but what is the actual thing that is driving that? And so for that process, you know, I worked with a wonderful research team and this team essentially worked together to look through bunches of academic articles, articles that are available through news organizations like Bloomberg. And we brought all that data in together and said, what story, if we put this all together, is the data telling us?

6:21Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman:And so essentially, you know, think about the average person. They're not going to be looking at reports. They're not going to be looking at policy briefs. They're going to be looking at books. They're going to be looking at newspapers, articles, that sort of thing. And so that's why we're trying to make it easily accessible in this book. Well, Anna, in your book, you also talk about not just the impact on the individual as it relates to this double tax, but additionally, the implications for society as a whole. So talk to us about the macroeconomic implications that you are seeing. Yes, I love that.

6:49Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman:I've got to clock it on Bloomberg, yes. I think that the way to think about the double tax, right, which by the way is the compounded cost of racism and sexism, right, is that this is essentially thought through the metaphor of like we're all in the same economic block, economic neighborhood, right? And so if you're in a neighborhood and the house five houses down catches on fire, you have two choices. You can go home and say, I'm going to catch up on another episode of Traitors, right? I don't think that's the best decision to make. Or you're going to call the fire department and say, hey, there's a fire in my neighborhood.

7:22Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman:We need to address it. So the double tax here is that fire. And so we're seeing this actually show up in data in real time in the sense that black women in particular are facing higher unemployment rates and a lot of people are like well that's a group that i shouldn't really care about because they're not just like me right but what's actually happening with them is starting to be reflected in other groups women more broadly right and mothers and so if we're not tackling essentially what's happening with women of color and black women in particular that unaccounted cost eventually spreads to everybody else we're speaking right now with anna gifti opuku ajemen she's the author of the double tax how women of color are overcharged and underpaid.

8:01Also joining us, Nora Melinda. She is a Bloomberg TV markets correspondent. So let me just ask you, if you could, you know, the data is there. You're writing these books, like bringing, you know, these problems, these situations to attention. What would you, what needs to be done? Are we talking about policy? Are we talking about companies doing things, government doing things? What do we need to see done to change some of this? Because Tim knows this I say this a lot with women you know yes women have made a lot of advancements but you look at the numbers and you have some numbers too about you know when it comes to black women in particular um you know in the highest paid in the highest paid careers like that's right if you're talking about wealth creation it's not just incomes but it's how do you advance from a generation or generation so what would you like to see changed or what needs to change so I think everything you

8:53Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman:mentioned is going to contribute towards the solution, right? It can't just be a silver bullet solution coming from one sector. It's going to be a combination of policies, combination of communities, and individual actions to ensure that the double tax actually gets eradicated for good. And I want to be clear about something. Even though the double tax is describing the compounded cost of racism and sexism, I just noted two ways in which people are facing inequality, which means that if you're facing any dimension of that right you're also going to be accounted for so by addressing the double tax for Nora and I I'm also addressing sexism for you right and that has spillover effects for you right and so it's actually very important for us to think about policies that for example are making it easier for folks to raise their kids right we're talking about the child tax credit for example that's been on the table in that yeah I know I'm shaking in my head because I just feel like there's issues that as a society we just don't value.

9:52What's the economic cost of all of this? How do you think about that?

9:55Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman:I think the economic cost of all this is it's hard to say definitively it's one thing. I think what happens is it shows up as different price points at different stages of life. Let me maybe give you a point of reflection that I realized. At the very end of the book, this book is sort of formatted as the lifetime cost of a woman's life, right? So I'm starting from your first mirror as a woman. You're dealing with beauty standards for the first time all the way through retirement. And it was until we started talking to women in retirement that I realized, oh my goodness, if the double tax isn't addressed in housing, if it's not addressed in motherhood, if it's not addressed in caregiving, it all just shows up at the end of your life.

10:38It's a cumulative effect.

10:40Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman:And so these policies that we're talking about, we're talking about making it easier for folks to actually save for retirement, but also ensuring that people have housing subsidies maybe when they're thinking about buying their first house, right? Because if they don't, they might be pulling from their 401k, and that means that they have nothing to retire with in the first place, right? But even then, as women, just thinking about sort of the cost we deal with to just look presentable, that in and of itself is a cost, and it can show up in our career trajectories, right? I mean, I'm preaching to the choir right now.

11:11Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman:Maybe. so I think that's that's sort of what I mean but Nora come back in talk to me about what you found to be surprising as you were doing this research I know for you particularly you really enjoyed the chapter that you wrote about motherhood caregiving child care what was surprising to you through your research can I tell you something I mean I'm really preaching the choir here parenthood is expensive yeah hello yeah raising kids is a really expensive thing to do and I don't think people are having a honest conversation about just how expensive it is so let me give you um maybe a short anecdote I was talking to my sister my sister's older than me okay I won't say how old but shout out to my sister Ellen right and but she looks amazing she looks amazing you already know it.

12:00You tell us to my mom and dad. She's going to call you and say, hey. She's going to call us. Right.

12:06Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman:And, you know, she was talking to me about child care, child care woes. And I said, why don't you hire a nanny? And it just went silent on the phone. And then she started to laugh. Yeah. She said, I don't think you know how much a nanny costs. And she was right. I had no idea how much a nanny costs. When I started breaking down the numbers, I said, oh my gosh, on average$40 ,000. That's not including health insurance. That's not including the fact that$40 ,000 in a place like New York is not a livable wage. Right? So you're really having to adjust to where you might need childcare. And I think the other thing too is there's a lack of public childcare options as well that I think I kind of knew about, but given that the childcare cost is so expensive, I said, why isn't Head Start robustly funded?

12:51Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman:Right? I'm a Head Start kid, right? Yeah. Why aren't these sort of public options available by and large. And I think that that is sort of the chapter that really had me thinking about my family plans, right? How many kids do I want to have? I had to call my parents and say, hey, mom and dad, maybe two, right? Because I think it's costly. Yeah, go ahead. No, I know Nora wants to come in, but it's also where this backdrop of war, this guns versus butter, like you think about in terms of government spending, like where things would go. Nora, come on back in though. I want to know what can the average listener do?

13:23I know you mentioned this analogy about the fire, the neighbor. We talked a bit about policy and, of course, the issues that still are prevalent.

13:30Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman:That's right. What can a listener do today? I think that I'm going to say two things. One that's more on the feely side and one that's more concrete. Okay. The first thing I would say is I want you to empathize with your neighbors. Right. I want you to have empathy for the people who don't look like you because they're dealing with different costs. and the costs that they're dealing with are affecting the communities that you are sharing together, right? So that's the first thing. So I think that what that enables is then concrete actions. Things like going to your local CVS and saying, hey, I'm not seeing certain products that would serve my neighbor.

14:09Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman:Is it possible for us to have more of those products available? Or I think for parents, getting in a group with other parents without judgment, right? And saying, look, we know this thing is costly it takes a village to raise a child how about we find a way to take care of each other's children that's how i was raised right right so i think that there are really sort of communal ways that we can address these costs that are also low cost i think a lot of times people look at stuff like this is like oh my gosh this is another 100 on my bill or whatever like that but i think for us it's really just about getting in community and identifying what those costs are and addressing those head on.

14:48Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman:Yeah. We have to go. Oh no! You gotta come back. So come back. Come back. This is a conversation worth continuing. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That's Anna Githiopuku-Ajaman. She's the author of The Double Tax, How Women of Color Are Overcharged and Underpaid. Also, Nora Melinda. She is a Bloomberg Television Martins correspondent. Alright everybody. Come back soon.

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