In the season premier of The Pay Check, we take a close look at the single biggest reason for the gender pay gap: Motherhood. Women start out their careers earning about as much as men, but the pay gap widens to a chasm after a woman has her first child. Host Rebecca Greenfield talks to Bloomberg economics reporter Jeanna Smialek about what having a kid does to pay and why certain countries have bigger wage gaps for moms than others. We also hear from Senator Tammy Duckworth about what it’s really like to “have it all.”
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The Motherhood Penalty

More than 150 years after the end of slavery in the U.S., the net worth of a typical white family is almost seven times greater than that of the average Black family. Season 3 of The Pay Check digs into into how we got to where we are today and what can be done to narrow the yawning racial wealth gap in the U.S.Jackie Simmons and Rebecca Greenfield co-host the season, which kicks off with a personal story about land Jackie's family acquired some time after slavery that they're on the verge of losing. From there the series explores all the ways the wealth gaps manifests and the radical solutions, like affirmative action, quotas, and reparations, that can potentially lead to greater equality.

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This special episode of The Pay Check features "What Could Have Been", the latest episode of White Picket Fence from Wonder Media Network.
How did the U.S. become a society that treats caregiving as a private family responsibility rather than a public good? In this episode, Julie explores the longstanding and continued role racism has played in preventing investments in public goods that would benefit everyone, including caregiving. We’ll also do a deep dive into the 1970s when the U.S. nearly invested in universal childcare — and how fear was deployed to block it.
Check out all the episodes from the new season of White Picket Fence wherever you get your podcasts.
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Introducing: White Picket Fence

On Breakthrough, a new series from the Prognosis podcast, we explore how the pandemic is changing our understanding of healthcare and medicine. We start with an examination of long Covid, a mysterious new illness that has stumped doctors attempting to treat symptoms that last for months and potentially years. It has changed the way hospitals work and forced healthcare officials to prepare for the next pandemic. Covid has also opened the door to revolutionary technology: messenger RNA vaccines. It’s a technology that never could have been proven so quickly outside the crucible of that first pandemic year, 2020, and it holds big implications for the future of medicine. Breakthrough launches on Oct. 19. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Introducing: Breakthrough

With the season behind us, Rebecca Greenfield and Jackie Simmons sat down during the Bloomberg Businessweek conference to go inside the making of The Pay Check. They talked about how the series came together, high points, challenges and reactions -- and even teased what might be coming from the Pay Check team in the future.
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Bonus: The Making of The Pay Check

For our final episode of season 3, we take a look at how reckoning with our history, collectively, and personally, can help us move forward. Closing the racial wealth gap might not be possible anytime soon. But if the U.S. wants to seriously tackle these injustices, it might need to start with the truth. A few years ago, Bloomberg colleague, Claire Suddath explored her own family’s connection to slavery and a plantation in Mississippi. Jackie sits down with Claire to explore what it was like to reckon with that past.
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Moving Forward by Looking Back

Reparations for slavery in the U.S. aren't happening any time soon. But there are other countries that have compensated populations for persecution. This week, the Pay Check heads to the U.K., which is in the midst of what it calls a "compensation scheme" to pay back Black residents known as The Windrush Generation. Olivia Konotey-Ahulu and Brentin Mock dig into why it's less of a model and more of a cautionary tale.
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The Motherhood Penalty

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