Dads Worth Less Than Moms Around House: Study

June 11, 2012

Fathers of America, you may consider yourselves indispensable, but a new survey says you’re only worth about one-third as much as mom around the house.

In fact, you are not even keeping up with inflation.

Insurance news and data website Insure.com released its annual Father’s Day Index on Monday, an attempt to calculate the value in wage terms of the work a father typically does around the house.

The value this year was some $20,248, about $1,000 less than the inflation-adjusted value of 10 years ago.

The website matched government wage data to 13 different fatherly household tasks to calculate the index. Among the jobs were barbecuing (matched to the U.S. Department of Labor’s “cooks, all other”), killing spiders (“pest control workers”) and mowing the lawn (“grounds maintenance workers”).

By comparison, the website calculated a typical mother’s household work at $60,182 — nearly three times greater.

The disparity is notable given research showing women still make less than men for the doing the same hours at the same jobs — 77 cents on the dollar, on average.

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