A Week's Worth: Quick takes on the world of work and money

The Dow dives, expectant mothers worry more about money, and environmental concerns have little effect on where people seek jobs.

• A 4.1 percent nosedive took the Dow Jones Industrial Average back under the 14000 threshold last week, largely due to investor worry over mortgage-backed securities.

•News flash! Wives and husbands – but especially the former – worry about money when planning a pregnancy, according to a survey by the Charles Schwab financial services company and BabyCenter, an online resource for new or expectant parents. Fifty-four percent of women in the poll perceived their parents as having been more financially secure than themselves at such times. Two in 5 mothers-to-be preferred that the gifts at their baby showers be contributions to the children's savings accounts.

•Even in households where a wife out-earns her husband, traditional gender roles don't tend to change, according to a new report. Over a five-year span, researchers in Sweden, Spain, and at Baldwin-Wallace College in Ohio studied dual-income couples and found that the wives still were responsible for most of the domestic chores – a routine that varied only because of bankruptcy or some other family crisis. The research is the basis of a new book, "Modern Couples Sharing Money, Sharing Life."

•There's a disconnect between professionals who promote themselves as green-aware and the opportunities they pursue for advancement, says Jobfox, a website that matches job candidates with talent-seeking employers in real time. Of 6,000 such candidates, it found just 5 percent who applied to companies known to be "ecologically friendly."