by Daniel Costello

Sure, this may seem waaaay off the news this week. And it is. But I think it's really fascinating.

For more than 30 years, economists have been putting out papers arguing that mothers earn about 6% less than women without children even when you take different productivity levels into consideration. Not surprisingly, mothers have waged an increasingly vocal war against the "Mommy Tax."

But according to new joint research from San Diego State University and Western Michigan University, there may be more to the mommy tax than meets the eye.

 

The researcher found that mothers' wage differences can be explained, nearly entirely, by their own decisions to take jobs that may have lower pay — as long as the job offers better family health coverage.

In the authors' words: "Thus, the much-reported motherhood gap appears to originate, at least in part, from a negative compensation wage differential arising from a relative preference on the part of the mothers for an important component of non-wage compensation, namely, health coverage."

It's only one study and I'm guessing some folks aren't going to buy it for a minute. Hey, as John Kenneth Galbraith said: "Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists."