Nugget from the new Census report on state-by-state income: The median income for Maryland women is 81.4 percent of that of men. Doesn't sound encouraging, but that's the 3rd-highest such ratio in the country. Not counting the District of Columbia, where women make nearly the same pay as men, the No. 1 state for gender pay equality was Colorado, where women made 82.4 percent of what men made. No. 2 was North Carolina, in which women made 81.5 percent of men's pay.

I can understand Maryland, where there are federal employers more likely to employ women in white-collar jobs and where a higher-than-average number of women have advanced degrees. But I don't get Colorado and North Carolina. In any event the statistic speaks highly of the North Carolina politicians, beginning with Gov. Terry Sanford in the early 1960s, who invested in the state's education system to raise it from the relatively severe inequality and poverty to which it seemed destined.

The subject of women's pay vs. men's is frequently debated and was the subject of a recent post here. There are non-discriminatory reasons for the gap: Women are more likely to choose lower-paying careers and to temporarily stay out of the workforce, which hurts their earning potential when they return. But studies show that even when women have the same experience & credentials as men in the same careers, they still make less.