Kate Mannelly is a 29-year-old teacher living in a two-bedroom apartment in Boston with her sister. Mannelly, however, wants to move out into her own one-bedroom apartment, but she is discovering that one-bedroom apartments don’t always cost half as much as two-bedroom apartments.
For
Business Insider
’s Hillary Hoffower, this makes Mannelly a victim of the dreaded “single tax,” which, according to Hoffower, was created “by post-World War II values of marriage and family.” Apparently, before World War II, adults all lived by themselves in separate apartments. Hoffower doesn’t explain where all the children came from.
Single women suffer the most from the single tax, according to Hoffower, because women “earn less than men on average.” “This disparity,” Hoffower writes, “becomes even more problematic as millennials weather yet another economic woe: 40-year-high inflation.”
And it is true, when mothers are included, that men do make more money than women.
But that gap
is almost entirely explained by the time mothers take away from the labor force.
Young, childless women
living in cities actually make more than their single male counterparts.
This is due almost entirely to the growing disparity in college attendance and graduation rates between men and women.
Women make up 60% of all college students and 66% of all college graduates
. If anyone is having trouble finding a one-bedroom apartment in Boston, it is probably a single man who, unlike Mannelly, is much less likely to have a college education.
Single women, according to Hoffower, are also forced to spend far more money than their married counterparts maintaining their social network. “It means fewer dinners at home alone and more drinks out with coworkers or dinners out with friends,” Hoffower explains. “There are Uber rides and Hinge dates — it can all put a dent in the bank account.” Yes, woe is the single woman forced to spend money on lavish meals, alcohol, and taxi rides.
The reality is that even though the numbers of both single men and women are rising,
most single people
who have never been married want to get married. Instead of
inventing
fictional ways in which the government punishes single people,
we should be looking for ways
to help people who want to get married achieve their dreams.
