SUBURBAN LABOR MARKETS, URBAN LABOR MARKETS, AND GENDER INEQUALITY IN EARNINGS

This study focuses on the role of labor market location in generating gender inequality in earnings. Specifically, the article examines whether suburban versus urban labor market conditions differentially affect gender-based earnings inequality. Tel Aviv metropolitan area labor force data support the thesis that women's tendency to settle for jobs in the vicinity of home is an exchange between economic opportunities and convenience, to avoid conflict with traditional roles. The cost of staying in the suburban labor market is greater for women than men, and suburban exceeds urban labor market gender-linked economic discrimination.     

LABOR IMMOBILITY AND THE FORMATION OF GENDER WAGE GAPS IN LOCAL MARKETS

Family ties have an important effect on the wage gap between male and female workers because wives are often more geographically tied to their husband's location, which may not be the best market for the wife's skills. Theory implies a testable inverse relationship between urban size—reflecting labor market size—and male-female wage differentials. Our results indicate that the wage gap between married men and women narrows with urban size. About 17 percent of the wage gap between married men and women can be accounted for by urban size—or, more fundamentally, by geographic immobility due to the family tie constraint.     

GENDER,MORTALITY, AND CORPOREAL INEQUALITY

Most previous empirical analyses of gender inequality have focused on modern economic indicators such as income. The advancement of theory on gender stratification requires detailed analysis of indicators with greater endurance and prevalence in world-historical terms. Sex mortality differentials are presented as cross-cultural indicators of corporeal gender inequality, defined as differential access to basic bodily resources for life and health. Indeed, mortality differentials represent a more fundamental form of gender inequality, in that women first must be alive before they may be denied access to other resources such as equal pay. Analysis of United Nations and World Bank data on developed and developing countries evidence the importance of ecological, economic, and familial explanations in determining corporeal gender inequality. Women's familial roles are found to be more important for gender inequalities in death at younger ages, and women's economic roles are more important for death at older ages. Implications of the results for mortality decline and gender stratification theory are discussed.     

LABOR MARKETS, INDUSTRIAL MONOPOLIZATION, WELFARE, AND IMPRISONMENT:

Various theorists posit that the rate of unemployment is linked to the rates of both welfare and imprisonment. This assumes a competitive labor market tied to specific controls of surplus populations. This article argues that contemporary labor markets lie on a continuum between competitive (secondary) and relatively non-competitive (primary) structures which creates a pattern of labor market segmentation. Such segmentation is linked with specific policies of incarceration or welfare, depending on the competitiveness of the labor market. Data from a cross-section of urban, industrial U.S. counties test the relationship between labor market segmentation, monopolization of industries, and the rates of welfare and imprisonment, controlling for a variety of other relevant variables. Regression analyses results suggest that as labor market structures become less competitive (i.e., move from predominantly secondary toward predominantly primary labor market characteristics), rates of welfare recipients and welfare benefits rise and rates of imprisonment fall. They also suggest that increasing industrial monopolization raises rates of imprisonment and lowers rates of welfare benefits. These findings indicate that the two major dimensions of economic segmentation (industrial competition and labor market competition) oppositely affect levels of welfare benefits and rates of imprisonment.     

ASSET DYNAMICS,LIQUIDITY, AND INEQUALITY IN DECENTRALIZED MARKETS

The Kiyotaki and Wright model has exerted a considerable influence on the monetary search literature. We argue that the model also delivers important insights into a broader range of macroeconomic and development issues. The analysis studies how market frictions and the liquidity of assets affect the distribution of income. Experiments illustrate how the economy adjusts to shocks to asset returns and to the matching technology. They also deal with long‐run transition. An experiment interprets the reversal of fortune hypothesis as a situation in which an economy with a low‐return asset takes over a similar economy with a high‐return asset. (JEL C61, C63, E41, E27, D63)     

RACIAL AND ETHNIC INEQUALITY IN HOMEOWNERSHIP AND HOUSING EQUITY

Wealth inequality, particularly in housing, has received increased attention in recent years for its importance to racial and ethnic stratification. Yet, while we know a fair amount about black-white wealth inequality, many questions remain regarding sources of Hispanic asset inequality. This article addresses this gap by examining racial and ethnic inequality in homeownership and housing equity among the pre-retirement population. Results support a stratification perspective of inequality for both blacks and Hispanics; even after accounting for numerous life-cycle, resource, and social-psychological considerations, blacks and Hispanics continue to lag significantly behind whites in housing wealth. While Hispanics initially appear better off than blacks with respect to housing, this is largely a function of their more favorable family structure. Important differences between blacks and Hispanics in the main contributors to housing inequality highlight the need to take a more multiethnic perspective on wealth stratification.     

THE JOURNEY TO WORK AND GENDER INEQUALITY IN EARNINGS:

It has been well documented that women tend to work closer to home than men. One interpretation of this finding has been that women face more spatially constrained labor markets than men, and these constraints are thought to be a factor in the gender gap in earnings. A recent study of Tel Aviv, Israel, by Moshe Semyonov and Noah Lewin-Epstein (1991) also found that working women clearly tend to hold employment more in the vicinity of their homes than do men. The observed deficits in earnings by employed women were thought to be exchanged for compliance with traditional gender-role expectations. Our study cross-validates key portions of the Semyonov and Lewin-Epstein study for the United States by examining the location of labor markets and their relationship to gender inequality in earnings in the 1988 wave of the NLSY panel database. Using annual earnings as the dependent variable and other similarly defined variables, we parallel their multiple regression analysis. The time-to-work reports of NLSY panel members are used to assess their commuting behavior and the results of this analysis are compared across four types of residential locations: rural, small urban, suburban, and large central city. We modestly confirm the gender inequalities in earnings produced by differential commuting behaviors for men and women but cannot fully generalize them to a broad set of residentially defined labor markets. For instance, women in suburban settings do have a higher return in earnings from time spent commuting but this effect is not significantly higher than the same returns for suburban men. A somewhat surprising negative effect of commuting time on the earnings of suburban women and men was also observed. We suggest further research on this problem involving the "perceived constraint' hypothesis to explain the commuting gap between men and women.     

USING GENDER: THE PERSONAL,INTERPERSONAL, AND EMOTIONAL STRATEGIES OF DOMESTIC LABOR

Traditional research on domestic labor has conceptualized work done in support of the home as one of the quintessential ways of “doing” gender. New directions in gender and ritual theory raise the possibility that domestic labor may also be about strategy, usefulness and intentions. Through interviews with 24 married couples, I explore the subjective experiences of men and women as they “do” their domestic labor. I find that while husbands and wives are continuing to do gender as a response to interactional accountability demands, they also “use” domestic labor as a vehicle through which they (1) reciprocally craft their gender identity, (2) symbolically communicate with their spouse, and (3) garner emotional energy. Furthermore, the men and women strategically mobilized specific tasks that are most useful in achieving these goals inside their unique dyadic schemas. Through these narratives, I explore the possibility that men and women not only do gender but they can use gender as well.     

UNDEREMPLOYMENT AND RACIAL COMPETITION IN LOCAL LABOR MARKETS

The primary concern in this paper is to analyze the effects of black population concentration on black and white men's relative and absolute underemployment levels in labor market areas while controlling for the degree of occupational segregation by race. We draw hypotheses from two primary bodies of research; one literature focuses on general racial competition and the other considers competition to be more limited. Our findings that racial inequality in underemployment levels increases with blacks' population share are most consistent with the general competition model. However, we also find some support for the limited competition model which holds that not all whites benefit from increased competition with blacks. Finally, we find that occupational segregation helps to determine the form that racial discrimination in employment adequacy takes. Where occupational segregation is high, black men hold relatively more low-wage jobs, but where occupational segregation is low, they experience higher levels of unemployment and more disadvantage relative to whites.     

CYCLICAL COMOVEMENTS IN INDUSTRIAL LABOR AND PRODUCT MARKETS: THEORY AND EVIDENCE

We establish the theoretical connection between industrial labor and product markets within the contractual wage-rigidity new Keynesian explanation of business cycles. We estimate time-series and cross-sectional regressions for 28 private two-digit (S.I.C.) industries and find: (i) greater uncertainty is associated with upward flexibility of the nominal wage and moderates the countercyclical response of the real wage to aggregate demand shocks; (ii) an upwardly rigid nominal wage response to energy price shocks reduces the real contractionary effects of these shocks; (Hi) downwardly inflexible nominal wages are associated with downwardly rigid prices in response to productivity shocks.     

WORKER POWER, FIRM POWER, AND THE STRUCTURE OF LABOR MARKETS

The purpose of this article is to advance the conceptual development of structurally-oriented approaches to stratification by elaborating a behavioral model of the structure of labor markets that is based on power relations among both individual and collective actors. After reviewing the various approaches to the study of stratification and enumerating some of its shortcomings, a theory of the operation of labor markets that synthesizes a number of the elements in extant theories is presented. A labor market typology is developed based on the relative power of firms and workers and four distinct types of markets are delineated, i.e., worker-controlled, firm-internal, worker-firm negotiated, and competitive. In addition, the dynamics by which these labor markets are transformed is discussed. It is argued that this conceptual framework solves a number of problems inherent in extant theories of the operation of labor markets and the article concludes by suggesting areas for future research based on the theory.     

LABOR MARKET SEGMENTATION AND INCOME INEQUALITY IN URBAN CHINA

Though central to the market transition debate, the effect of the institutional realignment on stratification order has not been adequately addressed. I reformulate market transition hypotheses and use data from a recent survey in a Chinese city to test market transition theory and path dependence arguments. I make the linkage between literatures on labor market segmentation and literatures on market transition. I show different returns to human and political capital in the private and state sectors in urban China. My research suggests modifications of the conceptual issues used in the market transition debate.     

WHITE, BLACK, AND HISPANIC FEMALE YOUTHS IN CENTRAL CITY LABOR MARKETS

Data from the 1% 1980 Census Public Use Sample are used to estimate the determinants of employment and wage rates for out-of-school female youths residing in central cities. Separate analyses are performed for white/Anglo, black, and Hispanic youths. Independent variables include individual, family background, and local labor market characteristics. The authors find that central city female youths have employment and wage rates substantially below their male counterparts. Their employment rates, however, are responsive to many of the same forces as for other sociodemographic groups in general, and central city male youths in particular. For Anglo females, wage rates are also responsive to many of the effects found for other groups, although they do not follow Anglo male youths in gaining from the "minority threat" effect. On the other hand, the wages for minority females are unresponsive to the usual variables. That is, these workers receive the minimum wage in an essentially undifferentiated manner. Thus, the triple disadvantage of being female, minority, and from a poor household is very much in evidence within 1980 census data.     

A RETROSPECTIVE INVESTIGATION OF GENDER INEQUALITY AND FEMALE HOMICIDE VICTIMIZATION

ABSTRACT

For the period 1981 to 1993 women represented 21 to 26 percent of homicide victims in the United States annually (Smith and Kuchta 1993 Smith , M. Dwayne and Ellen S. Kuchta . 1993 . “Trends in Violent Crime Against Women, 1973–89.” Social Science Quarterly 74 : 28 – 45 . [CSA]  [Google Scholar]). During this same time period sex-specific homicide rates have been among the forms of disaggregation researchers have used to test the utility of traditional correlates of homicide in predicting rates across various population subgroups and units of analysis. Based upon earlier research of the effects of gender inequality upon rates of lethal violence against women, and by applying a feminist theoretical perspective, it is hypothesized that the effect of general social structural characteristics of cities upon women's risk of homicide is mediated by levels of gender inequality. Specifically, this study examines the effects of gender, socioeconomic, legislative, political and extra-legal inequality upon female homicide victimization among 217 U.S. central cities for the period of 1989–1991. Using structural equation modeling results indicate that, among traditional social structural factors, economic deprivation, population size, divorce rate, and the sex ratio all have significant, positive effects on female homicide rates. However, in subsequent models testing the mediating effects of measures of gender inequality on the association between social structural variables and female homicide rates the divorce rate is the only social structural factor that continues to have a significant, positive effect upon homicide rates. Among the four measures of gender inequality, and in support of an ameliorative feminist argument, socioeconomic inequality has a significant, positive influence on rates of female homicide victimizaton. There is also a significant, negative effect of gender legislative inequality upon these rates. That is, the more laws or acts favorable to women, the lower their rates of homicide victimization. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

COMPARATIVE EVIDENCE OF INEQUALITY IN CULTURAL PREFERENCES GENDER,CLASS, AND FAMILY STATUS

ABSTRACT

In a recent work, Erik Olin Wright proposed using the word clender to designate the interaction term between class and gender, emphasizing that class and gender interact in generating effects that are supplemental to their independent effects. This article reports the application of Wright's suggestion to the empirical example of cultural consumption in estimating the interactive effect of class and gender on cultural consumption in five countries. The empirical application presented here also considered interactions between gender and family status. The findings revealed three interesting variants in the way clender works: (1) a disadvantaged consumption score for women of the lower classes in Italy and Sweden; (2) an advantage in cultural consumption for women of the upper classes in West Germany and the United States; (3) no cultural consumption differences between men and women of different classes in Israel. The interaction between gender and family status was also manifested in different ways in the different cases. This article adds to the literature that juxtaposes gender and class within the sociology of consumption and draws new connections between social and cultural boundaries based on an international comparison.     

ETHNIC DIVERSITY, SEGREGATION, AND INEQUALITY: A Structural Model of Ethnic Prejudice in Bosnia and Croatia

Widespread ethnic prejudice is an incomplete explanation for the development of war in the former Yugoslavia. However, high levels of prejudice in ethnic enclaves played an important role in increasing ethnic tensions and facilitating the outbreak of war. The purpose of this article is to explain county differences in average levels of ethnic prejudice in Bosnia and Croatia prior to the wars of national separation. We focus on structural characteristics of counties, such as ethnic diversity, economic conditions, and ethnic segregation and inequality, to explain county differences in average levels of prejudice. We also consider the possibility that compositional differences among counties (e.g., differences in average levels of education) explain county differences in ethnic prejudice. We combine survey data and county-level census data collected immediately prior to the wars of national separation and use hierarchical linear modeling techniques to analyze these data. Results suggest that ethnic diversity and ethnic occupational segregation decrease ethnic prejudice while ethnic economic inequality increases ethnic prejudice. Thus, structural characteristics account for some of the county differences in average levels of prejudice. County compositional differences, however, explain a majority of the county variation in ethnic prejudice. These results provide important clues to the origins of pockets of intense ethnic prejudice within diverse societies.     

THE ETHNIC, RACE, AND GENDER GAPS IN WORKPLACE AUTHORITY: Changes over Time in the United States

We analyze factors explaining differences in hierarchical authority between men and women within and across categories of race and ethnicity in two time periods, finding that the processes leading to authority within the workplace operate differently by gender than by race or ethnicity. The demand-side factor, percentage of women in an occupation, helps explain authority differences between men and women in most groups. Supply-side factors, and, in white–black comparisons, occupational location, contribute to differences by race and ethnicity within genders. In the later period, education is particularly important for Hispanic men reflecting, we believe, the recent surge in immigration rates.     

SOURCES OF ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT: THE EFFECTS OF INTERNAL LABOR MARKETS AND WORKER VALUES

Data from the 1991 General Social Survey and National Organizations Survey are used to assess how organizational commitment is structured by one “demand side,” organizational-based factor, firm internal labor markets, and one “supply side,” individual-based factor, the values/preferences of workers. Findings indicate that organizational commitment is best explained by the joint influence of these two factors rather than by their independent effects. Specifically, firms with internal labor markets are conducive to the development of high levels of organizational commitment to the extent that what they offer, namely, opportunities for career-status and long-term employment “fit” what workers desire: job security and possibilities for promotion with their current employer. We offer directions for future research that may shed additional light on the manner in which internal labor markets and the values/preferences of workers may structure organizational commitment.     

GENDER DILEMMAS, GENDER QUESTIONS, AND THE GENDER MANTRA

This paper discusses the social constructions of gender and the problematic effects of these constructions-masculine/feminie-on intimate attachments. It summarizes the aspect of feminist scholarship which revised the traditional developmental paradigm to include a psychology of women and cites recent infant research which re-describes development as a process of increasingly complex forms of relatedness rather than as a progression from attachment to separation. The authors are influenced by the school of feminist revisionism which argues on behalf of the integration of male and female attributes in each person. Two clinical techniques are suggested-"gender questions" and the "gender mantra"-which identify the contradictions inherent in the social construction of gender and encourage alternative constructions that more adequately represent men's and women's actual psychological experience.     

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.