Are Internet Ads Gender Biased?
In the most-watched soccer game in U.S. history, the U.S. trounced Japan in a 5-2 victory in the Women’s World Cup final. The U.S. team will receive $2 million from FIFA for the win. Last year, the German men’s team, which won the World Cup, collected a cool $35 million.
While FIFA is notorious for sexism among other dubious behaviors, a Carnegie Mellon University study confirms that other companies are also biased about women—especially when it comes to money. One troubling example: female job seekers on Google were less likely to be shown ads for high paying jobs than male job seekers.
Using an automated tool called AdFisher, researchers explored how Google’s automated ad server reacted when users with identical profiles--except for their gender--interacted with Google’s ads. The technology found that males were shown ads for a career coaching service for “$200k+” executive positions 1852 times, but the female group was shown those highly paid positions a mere 318 times. While the premier career coaching service ads were the top ads shown to males, the top ads shown to females were a regular job posting service and an auto dealer.
Google allows its advertisers to target a particular audience, so any company is allowed to promote different ads based on gender. In addition, the survey wasn’t able to pinpoint the source of the discrimination, whether it was Google, the advertiser, both of them, or the algorithm that was tracking the user behavior. Regardless of the cause, the research proves the inherent perils of customization and targeted ads.
The study was released just before a wave of criticism hit the tech industry, which was accused of gender bias in hiring practices. In general, at major companies like Facebook, Yahoo and Google, women hold few leadership posts and make up around 30 percent of employees.
To be fair, women have not exactly flocked to get degrees in computer science and related math and science areas. Those are the jobs tech companies value most since all new digital products require coding skills.
Number of the Day: $132,900
The cap on Social Security payroll taxes will rise to $132,900 next year, an increase of 3.5 percent. (Earnings up to that level are subject to the Social Security tax.) The increase will affect about 11.6 million workers, Politico reports. Beneficiaries are also getting a boost, with a 2.8 percent cost-of-living increase coming in 2019.
Photo of the Day: Kanye West at the White House
This is 2018: Kanye West visited President Trump at the White House Thursday and made a rambling 10-minute statement that aired on TV news networks. West’s lunch with the president was supposed to focus on clemency, crime in his hometown of Chicago and economic investment in urban areas, but his Oval Office rant veered into the bizarre. And since this is the world we live in, we’ll also point out that West apparently became “the first person to ever publicly say 'mother-f***er' in the Oval Office.”
Trump called Kanye’s monologue “pretty impressive.”
“That was bonkers,” MSNBC’s Ali Velshi said afterward.
Again, this is 2018.
Chart of the Day: GDP Growth Before and After the Tax Bill
President Trump and the rest of the GOP are celebrating the recent burst in economic growth in the wake of the tax cuts, with the president claiming that it’s unprecedented and defies what the experts were predicting just a year ago. But Rex Nutting of MarketWatch points out that elevated growth rates over a few quarters have been seen plenty of times in recent years, and the extra growth generated by the Republican tax cuts was predicted by most economists, including those at the Congressional Budget Office, whose revised projections are shown below.
Are States Ready for the Next Downturn?
The Great Recession hit state budgets hard, but nearly half are now prepared to weather the next modest downturn. Moody’s Analytics says that 23 states have enough reserves to meet budget shortfalls in a moderate economic contraction, up from just 16 last year, Bloomberg reports. Another 10 states are close. The map below shows which states are within 1 percent of their funding needs for their rainy day funds (in green) and which states are falling short.
Chart of the Day: Evolving Price of the F-35
The 2019 National Defense Authorization Act signed in August included 77 F-35 Lightning II jets for the Defense Department, but Congress decided to bump up that number in the defense spending bill finalized this week, for a total of 93 in the next fiscal year – 16 more than requested by the Pentagon. Here’s a look from Forbes at the evolving per unit cost of the stealth jet, which is expected to eventually fall to roughly $80 million when full-rate production begins in the next few years.
