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5C
WEST HAWAII TODAY | SUNDAY, JUNE 21, 2015
MANAGING YOUR MONEY,
WORK AND SUCCESS
Copyright © 2015 The New York Times
SpendingWell
Average annual hours worked by paid workers age 18 to 64, by wage percentile
Source: EPI analysis of Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement microdata
2,000
1,800
1,600
1,400
1,200
All Workers
1st to 20th wage
percentile
20th to 40th
40th to 60th
60th to 80th
80–95
Top 5%
’75 ’80 ’85 ’90 ’95 ’00 ’05
’13
JACOB HANNAH FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
THE NEW YORK TIMES
A die-hard community gardener
and composter, David Conrad,
77, wanted to age in a retirement
community that complemented
his love of all things green. So
seven years ago, he and his wife,
Sally, moved to earth-friendly
Wake Robin in Shelburne, Vt.
Now Mr. Conrad spends his
days managing the recycling
campaign, working in the com-
munity garden and walking the
community’s four miles of wood-
ed trails..
“I wanted to live in a place
that’s healthy,” said Mr. Conrad,
a retired college professor. “So
sustainability is very important.
We like to think that we’re lead-
ing the way.”
Green do-gooders like Mr. Con-
rad are forging a new path for
retirees. Though eco-conscious
retirement communities are
rare in the United States, they
are expected to grow in number
as baby boomers age and seek
healthier, greener alternatives.
These lush facilities offer lots
of unseen benefits. Carbon foot-
prints are reduced with energy-
and water-saving initiatives, in-
cluding geothermal heating and
low-flow toilets. And older peo-
ple can enjoy environmentally
friendly buildings that typically
offer airy spaces with more nat-
ural light and indoor furnishings
that use far less toxic materials.
The challenge is wading
through the policy of green stan-
dards. “Eco-friendly doesn’t
mean a lot,” Mr. Hopkins said.
“And some places just use buzz
words.”
Two types of official green stan-
dards can serve as guideposts.
The first, said Mr. Hopkins, is En-
ergy Star ratings on appliances,
a government label that desig-
nates energy efficiency. Second
is a community’s LEED certifica-
tion, a program put together by
the U.S. Green Building Council
to create healthier, more ener-
gy-efficient buildings. There are
four levels: certified, silver, gold
and platinum, the highest rating.
Getting this label requires lots
of adjustments, and energy effi-
ciency is only one of them. Oth-
ers include choosing drought-re-
sistant plants, using recycled
materials and installing large
windows for natural light.
Green retirement communities
are largely upscale and in the
Northeast and Northwest. Take
Atria Woodbriar Place, a gold
LEED-certified senior campus
in Falmouth, Mass. Appliances
are Energy Star rated and solar
panels generate some of the com-
munity’s electricity.
Roberta Hendricks, 81, says
she likes Atria Woodbriar be-
cause it has resource efficiency
that’s more difficult to create in
an existing home, such as low-
flow toilets and water-saving de-
vices. “What better life could you
have?” she asked.
“Energy is saved in
every way.”
Wake Robin pre-
dates LEED certi-
fication. But it has
added geothermal
wells and other
ene rgy - e f f i c i en t
upgrades over the
years. Some Wake
Robin
residents
with green agendas
also pitch in. Mary
Hoffman, 88, works
with the staff to find
ways to conserve
energy and encourage recycling.
In Portland, Ore., Rose Villa
has turned itself into a sustain-
able community. It has a garden,
the dining room gets organic pro-
duce from local farms and there
is a composting program. But the
community is not LEED-certified
because making the changes that
the certification requires can cost
tens of thousands of dollars, said
Vassar Byrd, chief of Rose Villa.
“There are so many ways to
focus on green,” she said. “You
have to decide what’s important
to you.”
For Mr. Conrad being green is
a necessity. “I want to leave the
world a little better,” he said.
RETIRING
CONSTANCE GUSTKE
Talking Points
Goldman Sachs Plans Loans
For the Average American
Goldman Sachs, which has
largely served as the bank of
the powerful and privileged for
146 years, is working on a new
business line: providing loans to
help you consolidate your credit
card debt or remodel your kitchen.
Goldman plans to offer loans of a
few thousand dollars to ordinary
Americans and compete with
local banks. The new unit hopes
to make its first loans next year
through a website or an app.
Cutting BPA From Cans
Some food giants like General
Mills and the Campbell Soup
Company have shifted from using
bisphenol A, or BPA, a chemical
used in the coatings of canned
goods to ward off botulism and
spoilage. But companies do not
disclose which products are now
BPA-free, so consumers do not
know which cans to buy. Studies
linking BPA to developmental
and reproductive health problems
go back decades.
Montana for Entrepreneurs
Silicon Valley gets the glory, but
the hotbed of American entrepre-
neurship appears to be Montana.
The state leads the nation in
business creation, according to a
new report. Researchers say the
oil boom has powered the three
states at the top of this year’s
ranking — Montana, Wyoming
and North Dakota— where a
drilling frenzy brought a rush of
development.
A Divide on Family Units
When it comes to family, the Unit-
ed States has a North-South di-
vide. Children growing up across
the northern part of the country
are more likely to grow up with
two parents than children across
the South. Evidence suggests that
children benefit from growing up
with two parents and states with
more two-parent families have
higher rates of upward mobility.
Seattle’s High-Tech Institute
Seattle’s academic and business
leaders have unveiled a plan to es-
tablish a new institute to strength-
en the region’s high-tech economy.
The Global Innovation Exchange
is a partnership between the
University of Washington and Chi-
na’s Tsinghua University. It will
open in fall 2016 with a master’s
program in technology innovation.
Microsoft will donate $40 million
to help the institute get started.
The biggest obstacle to women in
joining the highest ranks of the
business world is a lack of fami-
ly-friendly policies. That, at least,
has been the conventional wis-
dom, and it has been embraced
by progressive companies that
offer flexible schedules or allow
people to work from home.
But some researchers are now
arguing that the real problem
is the surge in hours worked by
both women and men. The pres-
sure of a round-the-clock work
culture — in which people are
expected to answer emails at
11 p.m. and take cellphone calls
on Sunday morning — is partic-
ularly acute in highly paid pro-
fessionals like law, finance, con-
sulting and accounting. Offering
benefits that help families is too
narrow a solution to the problem,
recent research argues.
“These 24/7 work cultures lock
gender inequality in place, be-
cause the work-family balance
problem is recognized as pri-
marily a woman’s problem,” said
Robin Ely of Harvard Business
School and a co-author of a study
on the topic. “The very well-in-
tentioned answer is to give wom-
en benefits, but it actually derails
women’s careers. The culture of
overwork affects everybody.”
The study examined an un-
named global consulting firm.
The firm asked the professors
what it could do to decrease the
number of women who quit and
increase the number who were
promoted. In exchange, the ac-
ademics could collect data. The
firm was typical in that employ-
ees averaged 60 to 65 hours of
work a week.
The researchers, who included
Erin Reid of Boston University,
concluded that the problem was
that “two orthodoxies remain un-
challenged: the necessity of long
work hours and the inescapabil-
ity of women’s stalled advance-
ment.”
The time Americans spend at
work has sharply increased over
the last four decades. We work
an average of 1,836 hours a year,
up 9 percent from 1,687 in 1979,
according to Current Population
Survey data analyzed by Law-
rence Mishel of the Economic
Policy Institute. High earners
work the most. Earners in the
60th to 95th percentile worked
about 2,015 hours in 2013, up
about 5 percent from 1979.
For elite workers, the challenge
is the conflict between family life
and a work culture in which long
hours have become a status sym-
bol. In the study of the consulting
firm, men were as likely as wom-
en to say the long hours inter-
fered with family lives, and they
quit at the same rate. One told
the researchers: “Last year was
hard with my 105 flights. I was
feeling pretty fried. I’ve missed
too much of my kids’ lives.”
Men and women dealt with
the pressure differently. Women
were more likely to take advan-
tage of formal flexible work pol-
icies, like working part-time, or
to move to less demanding posi-
tions.
Men either happily complied,
suffered in silence — or simply
worked the hours they want-
ed without asking permission.
About a third of them, according
to another paper about the same
firm by Ms. Reid, would leave to
attend their children’s activities
while staying in touch on their
phones. Decisions like these
tended to get men promoted.
When women tried the same
strategy, it usually didn’t work.
When a man left at 5 p.m., peo-
ple at the office assumed he
was meeting a client, Ms. Reid
said. When a woman left, they
assumed she was going home to
her children.
Underlying this disparity are
deep-seated cultural expecta-
tions about men and women.
Men are expected to be devot-
ed to their work, and women to
their family, as Mary Blair-Loy,
a sociologist at University of Cal-
ifornia, San Diego, has described
in her research. “It’s not really
about business; it’s about funda-
mental identity and masculinity,”
she said.
The researchers said that when
they told the consulting firm that
the problem was bigger than a
lack of flexible policies for wom-
en — that long hours were taking
a toll on both men and women —
the firm rejected that conclusion.
It is not surprising that compa-
nies prefer to focus on relatively
narrow fixes like more flexibility,
not more broadly on the culture
of overwork. They would have
little incentive to encourage their
employees to work less. Yet some
professions that also had round-
the-clock hours have figured out
alternatives. Certain doctors
have begun working in shifts, so
patients see whoever is available.
“Is it really necessary for peo-
ple to be on call 24/7? The answer
is increasingly no,” Ms. Ely said.
“These professions are beholden
to the whims of the client, and ev-
ery question has to be answered
immediately — but it probably
doesn’t.”
WORKING
CLAIRE CAIN MILLER
Women see careers stall
for taking advantage of
family-friendly policies.
24/7 Work Culture Exacts a Toll
DAVID M
c
NEW/GETTY IMAGES
LEAH MILLIS/ASSOCIATED PRESS
MATTHEW STAVER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Green Retirement Communities in Demand
ECO-MINDED
SENIORS
More baby
boomers seek to
retire in sustainable
communities. David
Conrad assists Mary
Hoffman in her
garden at Wake Robin
in Shelburne, Vt. .
