The Gender Gap Series: The Problem With The Pink Tax

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This episode is a part of our week-long series, The Gender Gap, where we're re-running some of our favorite stories about the gender gap in the economy. This story originally ran in November of 2018.

New York City produced a report on the gender price differential in some consumer goods. The so-called Pink Tax. It turns out, women pay more than men for certain goods, like clothes and home health products and personal care products. The study found that women pay as much as 13% more for some categories of products.

Some economists say this is a good thing: It creates more variety in the market and enables prices to be lower for some things. But others argue those markets are skewed, that advertising and marketing may have manipulated consumers to the point that those markets need to be rebalanced.

Today on The Indicator, we check out the pink tax for ourselves and look at how it came about.

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