Roberts, A (2013). Financing Social Reproduction: The Gendered Relations of Debt
and Mortgage Finance in Twenty-first-century America
According to Adrienne Roberts, what is social reproduction ?
(a) biological reproduction and social construction of what a mother is ; what
motherhood involves in the context of the social conditions
(b) Labour force is reproduced and maintained through providing food
education and training as workers
In a democracy: when the govt. makes policies, it assumes :
Equality of Individuals
Gender inequalities in the labour market and in holding assets are ignored
Social divisions and inequalities are reproduced due to unpaid labour: women’s
biological reproduction work, motherhood and family household work
Capital and financial market accumulation rests on these inequities between gender,
race and class
The role of state is to protect capital accumulation
In US, 2000-2007: Average household income: stagnant
US household debt: doubled to $13.8 trillion
debt to GDP ratio: 98 %
liabilities to disposable income ratio: 138%
Security for debt: residential real estate as > 80% household liabilities
Sharp rise in consumer debt: credit card, auto loans and student
Poor classes debt dramatically grew by 90%
In 1998- 2008, mostly low income and average Americans were given 15 million
subprime loans
Central arguments in this paper:
1. Social reproduction is privatized:
• Healthcare and education services are privatized
• Social welfare is cutback
• Old age security is individualized
• Social housing is unavailable
• Public subsidy for private homeownership
2. Working class, single women, racial minorities have become increasingly
dependent on the financial markets
3. Financial system in the US encouraged subprime mortgage lending, creation and
sale of mortgage-backed securities (MBSs) and derivatives, with the result:
• Debt increased for poorer classes and minorities
• Rapid accumulation of capital for Investors
• Poorer classes took out mortgage loans in order to meet their daily
and long term needs.
• Deepening indebtedness has perpetuated divisions and inequalities in wealth
and asset ownership along gendered lines: Why?
• Mortgage indebtedness.
•
Gender differences in women’s ability or asset-capacity to borrow is
not recognized but penalized
The Mortgage Interest Deduction (MID) tax benefit:
Highly regressive that subsidizes the rich homeowners
Private homeownership is promoted as a right in a ownership society
But no democratic measures to equalize the credit and borrowing for the poor
These conditions increase the wealth of the richer borrowers
When the system fails, e.g., mortgage loans not paid back- the poor women and
minorities lose all the equity they have built up
Section1: the concept of social reproduction
Section 2: explains how under neoliberalism, the debt in general, and mortgage
debt in particular, are the financial system’s re-privatization of social reproduction
Section 3: Shows the connection between finance, social policy and social
reproduction
MID tax benefit turned into an indirect subsidization of private homeownership for
the wealthiest segments of the population
As a result, the poor borrowers of mortgage loans helped redistribute resources to
the wealthy.
Section 4: subprime mortgage loans discriminated against the women, minorities
and the poor.
Thus financial markets and operations are not technical but human with prejudices
and discriminatory biases.
Market citizenship and social reproduction under capitalism :
Society assumes that social reproduction of labour will occur without formal
recognition of who is involved and how it is performed- no costs or compensation is
involved for reproducing labour as if it were automatic
The new concept of ‘market citizenship’ under neoliberalism vs. social citizenship:
Neoliberal market considers individuals as technical without social context of
class, gender, etc.
Thus market distributes goods and services for all assuring the well-being of all
regardless of differences and divisions within a population
Market citizenship:
George W. Bush’s ‘Ownership Society’
Thatcher ‘s Ownership Society ( to justify the privatisation of public housing in the
1980s
Bush - twenty-first century justification for eliminating public rental housing when
they were turning them into privatized housing
The state/employer was responsible for the costs of public housing – now it was
shifted to families and/or the private sector. This is a trend of ‘reprivatisation of
social reproduction’
Society assumes that women no longer were dependent on the ‘male-breadwinner’
Now it is assumed that women are a part of single or dual earner family system in
society
It does not recognize the inequalities in the labour market sectors where women
find jibs or their lack of equal pay in the market.
a dual-earner model is also disadvantageous for women, particularly given that
dominant trends are away from full-time, permanent employment
US, UK and Canada:
Prevalence of this trend where policies assume that all are equal regardless of
gender, etc.
Ignore the gendered nature of poverty globally: e.g., in Canada, women earn an
average of 71 per cent of what men do, pay equity is not enforced in certain sectors.
Fiscal policies are governed by ‘market citizenship’
Policies are made as technically dealing with issues rather than considering whom
they apply to or affect , e.g., reduce government revenues throuhg lower taxes for
the rich that reduces the benefits for workers or of women, e.g. child-care while at
work.
Debt and the reprivatisation of social reproduction
Cutting of Social support through public housing is opposed to MID for the well-off,
subsidizes the wealthy and transfers the assets from the marginalized populations
to the well-off.
This trend as redistributed wealth and social power upward, from the poor to the
rich, from women to men and from some races to white men and their families.
In 2010, MID subsidization cost govt. $108 billion- this was double the total set up
for ($48 billion) the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)
This department was mandated to improve access to affordable housing and to
eliminate discrimination in housing markets.
80 % of the benefits from mortgage-interest and property-tax deduc- tions go to the
top 20 per cent of taxpayers while 3.5% of the benefits go to the bottom 60% of
earners
Mortgage debt was used by the poor and working class to pay off consumer debts:
credit card, education loans and health care.
Medical indebtedness is linked to mortgage debt- 60 % ‘medically indebted’
households that refinanced their homes in 2005 used the money to pay credit card
loans
More women are bankrupted by health-care costs due to: lower incomes, lack of
access to employer-based health insurance, costs of pregnancies, and having
dependent children who need health care
MID is class and race biased.
This tax deduction is highly skewed against blacks, Hispanics and women, who have
relatively lower incomes, lower rates of homeownership, and lower house values
Among women: Racial inequalities
Women’s ownership of homes (2007): 57 % white (2007- 22%Hispanic – 33% black
Median home value of women of colour
• White $74,000
• Black: $47,000
• Hispanic: $35,000
Fiscal policies have differential impact based on gender and race as benefits that
encourage property and asset accumulation are different Tax provisions relating to
inheritance, capital gains taxes, pension provisions, child care credits also affect
them differently
In Brooklyn, Mortgage Crisis Eats Away Wealth of Several Generations of
Hispanics
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oF5JQfcd0-Y 1min
Blacks in US face greatest loss of wealth in US history 2008
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcPJ2o6j7i8 7 min
The role of class, gender and race in determining (lack of )access to credit at the
market rate of interest
Historically, women, the working poor and radicalized minorities were excluded
from access to credit
Under subprime borrowing system: inequitable and predatory loans ($85,000 and
$186,000 more in interest than average loans)
Based on assessing them as higher risk borrowers:
People with high credit scores to merit regular rate loans were made to borrow at
predatory rates (more than 50% high-interest loans)
In the short term: The result was the social reproduction of the millions of
Americans who have lost their homes and savings in the foreclosure crisis .
Long term implication: They will not be able to have social mobility as the
foreclosure crisis has precluded the possibility of using home equity to pay for
higher education, supplement retirement savings, or to rely on it as a safety net of
last resort in cases of illness, job loss.
Even if income and credit risk are equal, African Americans – 34% more likely to get
higher-rate and subprime loans than their white counterparts
Subprime lending is 5 times more among African American neighbourhoods than in
similar white areas.
Impact of the loss of home equity and rising levels of unsecured debt after the
housing collapse- (2005 – 2009)
class- and race-based inequalities in wealth, Increased:
On average, net worth decline:
Hispanic households - fell 66% from $18,359 to $6,325.
Black households: Fell 53%, from $12,124 to $5,677
White households: fell 16 %, from $134,992 to $113,149