Women Prime Victims of Subprime Mess

From the start of the mortgage crisis, I was skeptical of the main defense supporters of subprime lending offered—that it enabled people who otherwise couldn’t buy houses to do so. The stories in the press of actual people caught up in the crisis didn’t fit this picture; they nearly always were about people who already owned their homes and had gotten enticed into refinancing with subprime mortgages.

But along with most of the press, it didn’t occur to me that the subprime debacle might be a women’s story. Thanks finally to The New York Times for its coverage of the sorry truth:

Subprime mortgages, which are driving the foreclosure rate, have gone disproportionately to women. … Though women and men have roughly the same credit scores, the Consumer Federation of America found that women were 32 percent more likely to receive subprime loans than men. The disparity existed within every income and ethnic group. Blacks and Latinos are also more likely to get subprime loans than comparable white borrowers.

Get that? Contrary to the apologists, lenders weren’t offering higher rates in exchange for taking on more risk. They were doing what they could get away with, and they could get away with it because of the whole context of sexism and racism at work in our culture. The Consumers Union attributes some of the gender disparities to the greater income instability women face because of divorce or family medical emergencies (they didn’t mention the added time women spend out of the workforce to care for children or elders). Other experts suggest that mortgage brokers assume that women are less confident to negotiate or shop around, and so they figure they can get away with offering them higher rates (a self-fulfilling prophecy, of course). Pile that sexism on top of the likelihood that a low-income neighborhood is not served by prime lenders and you get a nasty picture of shady lenders preying on the vulnerable: women, people of color, and children. I guess that’s what “women and children first” always really meant.

Because if the subprime crisis is a crisis for women, then it is a crisis for children. A foreclosure counselor for a nonprofit in Baltimore told the Times that his typical client is single and female with two children.

Congress and the presidential candidates, what are you going to do about it? (While John Edwards called for a mandatory foreclosure moratorium, Hillary Clinton has called for only a voluntary moratorium, a freeze on rate increases on adjustable mortgages, but proposes $30 billion in aid to affected homeowners and communities. Barack Obama is not calling for a moratorium, and offering only tax credits to homeowners that would average about $500.)

What will the presidental candidates do for mothers?

You aren’t hearing much this campaign season about issues particularly facing women and parents, and you sure aren’t hearing the candidates offering practical solutions to the stresses facing working mothers. So I trundled my (virtual) self off to the candidates’ web sites to see if I could dig up the candidates’ positions on these issues.

First, the Democrats, at least the leading three candidates. Bottom line first, and then the details: Edwards is the only candidate, Republican or Democrat, who demonstrates that he has thought about the practical and economic difficulties specifically faced by women. The man gets it. Read this list of his proposals addressed to women and weep, as I about did, since it’s a longshot this man will be president:

Require businesses to offer paid sick days. Expand the child care tax credit and move toward universal preschool. Expand home health care and offer respite care for those caring for elders. Compensate women who pay less into Social Security, and therefore under current provision receive less benefits, because they are caring for children or other family members instead of working for pay. End poverty (disproportionately faced by mothers and children) and raise the minimum wage (two-thirds of minimum wage earners are women). Pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, which seeks to end wage discrimination against those who work in female-dominated or minority-dominated jobs by establishing equal pay for equivalent work. Remove some of the tax penalties exacted on low-income, two-earner married couples by expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit.

And that’s just the stuff on his page on women. The proposals on his “working families” page are great for mothers too. The only major thing I see missing is paid family leave.

Obama’s offerings are nearly as good, the differences between him and Edwards on this score being largely a matter of presentation. Where Edwards speaks specifically to and about the difficulties facing women, Obama mentions only families and fathers. But, alone among the candidates, Obama mentions paid family leave (his plan is to encourage states to offer it). He, like Edwards, supports requiring employers to offer paid sick leave.

He would not only expand the child care tax credit, but make it refundable, so that low-income families could benefit from it. Obama, too, has a plan to move toward universal preschool and expanded child care funding. He would quadruple Early Head Start and increase Head Start funding. He would also expand funding for after-school programs (which always sounded frivolous to me, until I became a parent and began to wonder what you do with your kid between the end of the school day and the end of the work day).

About his plan to “promote responsible fatherhood,” I’m not too sure. (It sounds awfully like the Moynihan report, and is this where we want policy attention focused? How about rewarding responsible motherhood, or at least removing the penalties on mothers, which in the end amount to penalties on responsible fathers, too?) Elsewhere, he mentions that he would provide a special supplement to the Earned Income Tax Credit to workers who “are responsibly supporting their children on child support,” i.e. fathers. As best I can tell, his “Making Work Pay” tax credit would do little to erase the penalties on two-earner families.

Clinton’s families planks sound nice, in a vague sort of way. “Attracting and supporting more outstanding teachers and principals, and paying them like the professionals they are” is good, but precisely how? Reforming No Child Left Behind, also good, but how? “Giving new parents support and training to promote healthy development for their children” sounds all right, but not like bread and butter to me. Increasing access to early childhood education is great, but she gives no promise to move to universal preschool. She does mention expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit and the child care tax credit, without offering details. She mentions family leave, but says nothing about paid leave. And she, like Edwards, supports legislation to provide those taking care of elders with respite care.

There you have it, folks. Next, on to the Republicans.