Upgraded to Bad Jobs: Low‐Wage Black Women's Relative Status since 1970

Labor market changes complicate the analysis of black women's status relative to white women because education, occupational attainment, and race–gender are now less predictive of earnings. Low‐wage black women's relative status has improved somewhat from 1970 to 2000, contrary to the well‐documented decrease in relative status reported for all black women wage earners since 1980, but their dramatic occupational upgrading was not responsible for the trend. White‐collar occupational positions formerly responsible for white women's relative earnings advantage no longer deliver that reward, as restructuring has produced a proliferation of bad jobs across occupational groups. This study argues that increasing exposure to precarious work is crucial to understanding changes in low‐wage black women's relative economic status since 1970.     

Dynamics of earnings inequality among female-headed households in the United States

The labor market in the United States has gone through a number of noticeable changes, one of which is a rise participation of women in the labor force. A number of studies have investigated the consequences of these changes on wage, income, or earnings inequality in a static framework. This study investigated the consequences of these changes on earnings inequality over time. The earnings inequality among male- and female-headed households is compared. I further considered the factors that might have influenced the earnings inequality among female-headed households. Short-term and long-term inequality was measured from 1978–1986. It was found that short-term inequalities generally have a rising trend and contain transitory components; long-term inequalities declined in the early years because of a smoothing of transitory components; and within-group inequalities are the principle determinant of overall inequality. Education, race, age, and marital status were considered as possible contributors to the overall inequality. Education and race were shown to be the most influential factor explaining inequality among female-headed households and explained a third of the observed inequality. Earnings stability profiles reveal the existence of permanent and chronic inequality.     

From classes to copulas: wages,capital, and top incomes

Public debates about the rise in top income shares often focus on the growing dispersion in earnings, and the soaring pay for top executives and financial-sector employees. But can the change in the marginal distribution of earnings on its own explain the rise in top income shares? Are top executives replacing capital owners in the group of top-income earners, or are we rather witnessing a fusion of top capital and top earnings? This paper proposes an extension of the copula framework and uses it for exploring the changing composition of top incomes. It illustrates that changes in top income shares can easily be decomposed into respective changes in the marginal distributions of labour and capital income and the changing association between the two types of income. An application using tax record data from Norway shows that the association between top labour and capital incomes grew stronger between 1995 and 2005 in the top half of the wage and capital income distribution, though it declined for the top 1% of capital income receivers. A gender decomposition demonstrates that the association of wage and capital incomes at the top is particularly striking for men, whilst women are largely under-represented in the top halves of the two marginal distributions.     

THE DECOMPOSITION OF INEQUALITY BY CLASS AND BY OCCUPATION:

Sociological research on earnings and income has focused on predicting individual income. Analyses most often use occupational status or class, along with other economically relevant variables, to explain earnings or income variations among individuals (income determination). Aggregate inequality (income distribution) has received considerably less attention, except in cross-national research. This especially holds for applying central concepts of stratification to the analysis of inequality. That is, class and occupation differences in economic rewards are rarely used to investigate aggregate earnings or income inequality. This study, using 1976 and 1977 Panel Study of Income Dynamics survey data, estimates the proportion of total earnings/income inequality accounted for by class and by occupation. Theil's index is used to measure earnings and income inequality and thus decompose total inequality into between-and within-group components. Wright's five-category schema is replicated for decomposition of inequality by class and a traditional four-category ordinal typology for decomposition by occupation. The two schemas show similar results: both class and occupation respectively account for between one-fifth and one-fourth of total earnings and income inequality. The results show the relevance of these central stratification typologies for the analysis of aggregate inequality.     

SOURCES OF EARNINGS INEQUALITY IN THE BLACK AND WHITE FEMALE LABOR FORCES

Earnings inequality trends and their sources from 1975 to 1986 are evaluated for two historically subordinate working groups—black and white women—using Current Population Survey data. The dual nature of women's employment, improved earnings opportunities, and continuing segregation into low-paying positions create conditions under which earnings inequality in these two groups is expected to increase. Two sources of changing inequality levels are examined to determine which better explains inequality trends: the redistribution of women across labor market positions, which should have occurred due to industrial restructuring; and changes in the rates of earnings returns to labor market positions. For both groups, changes in returns better explain positive inequality trends in the 1980s, although black women's earnings are somewhat more influenced than whites' by their redistribution across labor market positions.     

Globalization,Producer Services and Income Inequality across US Metro Areas

We analyze globalization impacts on changes in income inequality, focusing on the top and bottom of the income distribution. Data are for all US metro areas from 1980 to 1990. Income polarization has risen. The international flow of labor polarizes earnings by depressing wages among low-income workers. Producer services increase earnings at the upper levels, but, in contrast to the main theories, are unrelated to polarization.     

Occupational Race Segregation,Globalization, and White Advantage: White-Black Earnings Inequality in U.S. Metropolitan Areas

Addressing the need to systematically assess the materialist foundations of color-blind racism, we use insights from critical race theory to investigate the metropolitan-level racial inequality at the turn of the century. Namely, we examine the association between occupational race segregation and white advantage (i.e., white-black earnings inequality) for men and women in 202 U.S. metropolitan statistical areas in the year 2000. We find that occupational race segregation exacerbates white advantage for both male and female workers, supporting the tenets of the materialist conception of color-blind racism. We also consider how processes of globalization and labor market transformation impact white advantage. Our findings indicate that global capital increases white advantage for males, whereas foreign direct investment and casualization serve to decrease it. They also indicate that exports decrease white advantage for females, whereas percent foreign born increases it.     

The Unintended Significance of Race: Environmental Racial Inequality in Detroit

This article addresses shortcomings in the literature on environmental inequality by (a) setting forth and testing four models of environmental inequality and (b) explicitly linking environmental inequality research to spatial mismatch theory and to the debate on the declining significance of race. The explanatory models ask whether the distribution of blacks and whites around environmental hazards is the result of black/white income inequality, racist siting practices, or residential segregation. The models are tested using manufacturing facility and census data from the Detroit metropolitan area. It turns out that the distribution of blacks and whites around this region's polluting manufacturing facilities is largely the product of residential segregation which, paradoxically, has reduced black proximity to manufacturing facility pollution.     

The influence of earnings on income distribution in the United States

This article discusses whether the so called “skill-biased technological change” hypothesis is able to explain the individual earnings inequality in the U.S. during the period 1968–2000. Using the statistic information supplied by the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the article analyzes the earnings evolution, explaining the reasons why earnings inequality has increased, and the relation of this increase with the household income distribution. The main conclusions are the following: (a) changes on labor productivity are not the main cause of the increase in earnings’ inequality, and (b) this earnings’ inequality is not the only reason for the increase of the households’ income inequality.     

A Research Note on Family and Income Distribution: The Equalizing Impact of Married Women's Earnings in Metropolitan Brazil*

Using the 1985 Brazilian Annual Household Survey (PNAD), this study analyzes the extent to which the labor force participation of married women influenced familyincome inequality. The marginal impact on family earnings is decomposed into two components, one generated uniquely by differences in earnings inequality between spouses and another produced by imperfect assortive mating on spouses' earnings. Results show that the correlation among spouses' earnings is significantly less than one (0.4), and that the level of earnings inequality is more than 50 percent higher among wives than husbands. Because these forces are offsetting, wives' labor income has a negligible impact on family-income inequality in Brazil. The results demonstrate the importance of isolating the influence of imperfect assortive mating from that due to inequality in earnings between men and women.     

Age,Experience, and Schooling: Decomposing Earnings Inequality in the United States and Brazil*

This article analyzes age and experience profiles of earnings inequality for U.S. and Brazilian males. Decomposition of the inequality profiles using a standard human capital earnings equation clarifies the determinants of cross-sectional inequality profiles and demonstrates a number of important differences in the shape of the two countries' profiles and in their underlying components. Most dramatic are Brazil's higher returns to schooling and higher variance in years of schooling, both factors contributing to the significantly higher level of income inequality in Brazil. Changes in the distribution of schooling across cohorts are shown to play a central role in explaining cross-sectional inequality profiles within each country and differences in earnings inequality in the United States and Brazil.     

The Socioeconomic Attainment Patterns of Africans in the United States1

Using data from the public use micro data sample of the 1990 U.S. census, we examine the socioeconomic attainment patterns of Africans in the United States, within the context of the assimilation and selectivity perspectives. Three primary findings emerge from this study. First, we find that white African men and men from English‐speaking Africa have higher net hourly earnings than their nonwhite and non‐English‐speaking counterparts. Second, we find that while South African men have higher net hourly earnings than men from a number of selected African countries, there is no statistically significant difference between the net hourly earnings of South African women and women from these selected African countries. Third, we find no statistically significant difference between the net hourly earnings of black African and black American men and women.     

Racism and Sexism as Functional Substitutes in the Labor Market

The returns from the 1970 U.S. census are used to examine whether racial and sexual discrimination tend to vary together or whether they are functional substitutes for one another in the labor market, i.e., whether they operate in the same manner to produce the same results. The impact of racial discrimination is measured by both the percentage of the population of a state that is of third world origin and the ratio of black to white male annual earnings. Sexual discrimination is measured by the ratio of white female to white male earnings and urban female to urban male earnings. The values of each of these indicators is compared for the 50 U.S. states. The effect of the percentage of the population that is urban, the percentage of the economically active population in manufacturing, the level of personal income, region, and percentage of the population that is third world is controlled for. The results show that sexual discrimination can be seen as a functional substitute for racial discrimination in the labor market. Where racial discrimination is the most significant, sexual discrimination is the least. This supports the argument that the capitalist economic system needs a specially oppressed group of menial laborers to perform its most menial and low-paying tasks. Either white women or third world people (men and women) can fill these jobs. When third world people are available, white working women do not have to be pressed into them to the same extent. However, when third world people are not present, or are not especially discriminated against, then white working women tend more to perform the "dirty work" jobs and are consequently less likely to be found in the "better" jobs.     

Earnings and Expenditures on Household Services in Married and Cohabiting Unions

Despite the rise in women’s paid employment, little is known about how women and their partners allocate money to outsource domestic tasks, especially in unmarried unions. Tobit analyses of 6,170 married and cohabiting couples in the 1998 Consumer Expenditure Survey test hypotheses that recognize gender inequality between partners, gender typing of household tasks, and differences between cohabitation and marriage. Women’s earned income is more important than men’s for spending on female tasks. Men’s earnings are not more important for male tasks, but the earnings of married men are more strongly linked to expenditures on female tasks than are the earnings of cohabiting men. The research indicates that working women leverage their earnings to reduce their domestic burden through outsourcing.     

Cisgendered Organizations: Trans Women and Inequality in the Workplace

This article responds to calls to better understand how intersecting “inequality regimes” operate in organizations. Through in‐depth interviews with 25 white trans women about their workplace experiences, my analyses highlight how trans women navigate relational practices that are simultaneously gendered and cisgendered—that is, practices that maintain cultural connections between sex and gender and maintain gender as immutable. Findings demarcate three distinct mechanisms by which cisgenderism, a system that devalues women and trans people, operates and strengthens hierarchical privileges at work: (1) double‐bind constraints; (2) fluid biases of cissexism and sexism; and (3) group practices of privilege and subordination. In the first regard, analyses reveal unique double binds that trans women face—binds that dictate contradictory feminine and masculine ideal worker expectations but also expectations of gender authenticity. Second, I find that trans women often hover between two subordinate statuses (i.e., gender and transgender status) in a given workday, a fact that prods a more fluid conception of cisgenderism. Finally, this study highlights how cis men collectively mobilize through group practices to repair cisgender system breaches. All three dimensions are critical for understanding the production of workplace inequality between not only trans women and cis men, but all feminine‐identified workers.     

The Effects of Traditional Family and Gender Ideology on Earnings: Race and Gender Differences

Despite increasing gains in labor market opportunities, women and racial minorities earn less than their white male counterparts. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, this study explores racial and gender variation in how family and gender ideology shape this wage gap. The findings reveal that traditional role attitudes reduce earnings for African American men, African American women, and white women. However, white women experience the largest threat to wages as a result of conventional gender ideology. Further, the number of children and the timing of childbearing are detrimental to black and white women’s earnings, while neither of these factors hampers men’s earnings.C. André Christie-Mizell, Department of Sociology, University of Akron, 258 Olin Hall, Akron, OH 44325-1905, USA; e-mail: mizell@uakron.edu.     

The Reproduction of Gender Inequality in Sweden: A Causal Mechanism Approach

In many respects, Sweden is maybe the country where public policies to increase the equality between men and women have been most prolonged and advanced. In 1996 the UN declared Sweden to be the most gender‐equal country in the world. However, women still take much more responsibility for children and domestic work than men do, leading to the reproduction of gender inequality in the labour market and in society at large. A causal mechanism is used to analyse this phenomenon, starting from the observation that men are on average three years older than women and thus already have a stronger position on the labour market when a heterosexual couple is formed. This increases the risk that the woman will lose the first negotiations on how to divide household and wage labour when they have children. This will in turn lead to increasing returns for the man, increasing the risk that she will lose subsequent negotiations about the division of labour. What seems to be a rational arrangement for both (increasing the total income for the family) results in the reproduction of gender inequality. The analysis shows that gender inequality in a country like Sweden is reproduced behind the backs of the agents.     

Income Satisfaction Inequality and its Causes

In this paper, the concept of Income Satisfaction Inequality is operationalized on the basis of individual responses to an Income Satisfaction question posed in the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP). Income satisfaction is the subjective analogue of the objective income concept. The paper introduces a method to decompose Income Satisfaction Inequality according to the contributions from variables such as income, education, and the number of children. Given the panel structure of the data, inequality may be attributed partly to permanent individual circumstances and partly to transitory changes. The paper shows that by far the largest part of the satisfaction inequality has to be ascribed to unobserved heterogeneity. Distinguishing between a structural and an unexplained part of inequality we find that income explains the largest part of structural Income Satisfaction Inequality together with household membership; for non-working individuals, the age distribution is very relevant as well.     

Trend Analysis of Anticipated Lifetime Income Inequality among Post‐war Japanese Youth

This study aims to measure the inequality of anticipated lifetime income and the inequality of annual income among the younger generation (24–29‐year‐old men), and to examine any trends that can be found in terms of inequality between 1955 and 2005 in Japan. Anticipated lifetime income is defined in this study as the present value of the total anticipated annual income that one is likely to earn each year between the ages of 24 and 59 years, assuming that there is no intragenerational class mobility. The anticipated lifetime income for each young male is estimated using the Social Stratification and Social Mobility Survey dataset, which is a Japanese national cross‐sectional survey of social stratification and social mobility. An inequality in the anticipated lifetime income can be regarded as an “inequality of outlook” among the younger generation. As a result of this analysis, it was found that the Gini coefficient, the most general measurement of income inequality, had significantly increased for anticipated lifetime income between 1995 and 2005. At the same time, the gap between the Gini coefficient of anticipated lifetime income and that of annual income had narrowed. It is suggested that “inequality of outlook,” which cannot be easily identified using a superficial index, has increased significantly.     

Nationality and Income Attainment among Native and Immigrant Hispanic Men in the United States*

This study examines earnings inequality between Hispanic-origin men and non-Hispanic white men (referred to as white) using the 1976 Survey of Income and Education. Results show that human capital and labor supply variables have more impact on Hispanic earnings than labor market characteristics. Post-school job experience and weeks worked conform most consistently to the predictions of micro-economic labor theory. Formal schooling, while positively related to earnings, does not uniformly influence job rewards among Hispanic-origin groups. Ecological variables (social and economic organization) of the labor market have less impact on earnings. There is some evidence that whites benefit from the presence of large concentrations of minority workers, while two Hispanic groups—native Mexican and other Spanish men—are negatively affected by high concentrations of Hispanic workers. A composition analysis shows that from 10 to 50 percent of the earnings gap between Hispanic and white men may be attributable to discrimination.