Occupational Gender Segregation and the Earnings Gap: Changes in the 1980s

The 1980 and 1990 U.S. Census data confirm the decline in the earnings gap between men and women. Occupational segregation by gender also declined during the 1980s. Cross-sectional decompositions show that 15% of the earnings gap would be eliminated if women′s occupation distributions were the same as men′s. Over-time decompositions show that declining occupational segregation accounted for about 36% of the decline in the earnings gap; most of the declining earnings gap resulted from more equal pay within occupations.     

Scaling the prestige,authority, and income potential of college curricula

This paper develops the concept of “targeted education,” a theoretical ranking of college curricula, into a multidimensional framework. The new scales, based on the traditional stratification dimensions, prestige, authority, and income, are then used in a study of sex differences in the process of occupational achievement among men and women with college degrees. The targeted education scales predict occupational prestige and wages 7 years after the college degree, and they point out interesting differences between male and female attainment processes. In general, targeted education has a greater quantitative impact for men's occupational outcomes than for women's prestige and income, but results also suggest significant qualitative differences between men and women. A large proportion of women target their education toward, and end up in, an under-employed labor pool for the primary and secondary school system.     

Buffering income loss due to unemployment: Family and welfare state influences on income after job loss in the United States and western Germany

This article analyzes how the family and the welfare state influence household income trajectories after job loss in the United States and in western Germany. Drawing on panel data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), I study the income buffering effects of the family and the welfare state in the short an in the long run after job loss. I demonstrate that household income trajectories after job loss in the two countries are similar for couple households. However, men in the United States rely relatively more on family resources to overcome income loss, whereas German men’s incomes are secured mostly by the welfare state. Women’s unemployment in both countries is mainly buffered by their partners’ higher earnings. Because single households have no access to family support, they face much higher losses in the United States than in Germany. I also show that the more generous German welfare state triggers less private self-help in the form of increased labor force participation on the part of women when their partners lose their jobs. Over time, the family has become more important in buffering incomes after job loss in the United States which smoothed men’s and roughened women’s income trajectories in couple households. In Germany, worsening re-employment chances increased income losses in the long run after job loss.     

Her money, her time: Women’s earnings and their housework hours

Do husbands and wives divide housework on the basis of who makes more money? Much of the recent literature has focused on the effects of individuals’ earnings relative to their partners’ on their housework. By contrast, this paper analyzes the effects of women’s own earnings on the time they spend doing housework in the context of heterosexual couple households. A conservative estimate using the second wave of the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH) is that the negative association of women’s housework with their own earnings is two to three times greater than that with their partners’; in the full model, the association with partners’ earnings is not statistically significant. The importance of women’s own earnings in housework models is highlighted by the comparable effect of income on housework among single women. It appears that so far as housework is concerned, women do not benefit greatly from their male partners’ incomes. The finding emphasizes the gender segregation of domestic labor, and underscores the importance of income differences among women in explaining their housework behavior. It shows that the difference between the mean housework hours of the women with the lowest and highest earnings is as large as the difference between the mean housework hours of women and men.     

Sex similarities in occupational status attainment: Are the results due to the restriction of the sample to employed women?

Research on sex differences in occupational attainment suggests that working men and working women attain essentially the same mean level of occupational attainment and do so through quite similar processes. A possible explanation for these similarities is that the sample of working women contains an overrepresentation of successful women, since women who can afford not to work will stay out of the labor force unless they find a job commensurate with their education. This we define as a censoring problem. By extending a technique developed by Heckman, we can estimate the structural parameters for all women, regardless of current employment status. This procedure allows us to assess the impact of the censoring problem on women's occupational attainment equations.     

Sex and marriage of raters in the evaluation of occupations

The evaluation of occupational prestige ratings obtained from different subgroups within the same society has been shown to be remarkably similar (Reiss, A. J., Jr., Duncan, O. D., Hah, P. K., and North, C. C., 1961, Occupations and Social Status, Free Press, New York; Svalastoga, K., 1959, Prestige, Class, and Mobility, Gyldendal, Copenhagen; Tiryakian, E. A., 1958, American Journal of Sociology 63 (January), 390–399). Our purpose is to explore how the gender and marital status of raters influence the evaluation of occupational prestige. Using more detailed data than heretofore available, we will reexamine the similarity between occupational prestige evaluations observed among female and male respondents. Models of the way in which characteristics of occupational incumbents, such as income and education, are constructed to explore possible differences in the ways in which male and female raters evaluate occupations. The results of this analysis by gender of rater will then be used to examine both the gender and marital status of raters.     

Inequality in the family: The institutional aspects of women’s earning contribution

This paper examines the effect of employment-supportive policies and arrangements on women’s economic contribution to their family. Using samples of working-age couples in 21 countries we employ multilevel modeling to separate the effects of household and country-level variables on earnings. We distinguish two types of relevant contextual factors: those that support women’s employment while preserving their domestic roles and those that potentially reduce intra-family economic inequalities by allowing women to allocate more of their time to paid employment. The findings suggest that all employment-supportive policies and arrangements increase women’s relative contribution to the household income through their effect on female labor force participation. Among dual-earner families, however, higher rates of childcare facilities increase women’s contribution, while long maternity leave and part-time employment decrease it. These tendencies are more pronounced among mothers.     

Unemployment and men's entrance into female-dominated jobs

Despite the contraction of many male-dominated occupations, men have made limited progress in entering female-dominated jobs. Using monthly employment histories from the SIPP, we examine whether individual economic conditions—such as a period of unemployment—are associated with men subsequently pursuing female-dominated work. Specifically, we ask whether men are more likely to enter female-dominated jobs after unemployment, compared to men who take a new job directly from employment. We find that unemployment significantly increases the odds of men entering female-dominated work among men who make job transitions. By examining changes in occupational prestige as well as wage differences before and after unemployment, we also find that entering a female-dominated job (compared to other job types) may help men mitigate common scarring effects of unemployment such as wage losses and occupational prestige downgrades. Accordingly, this study reveals a critical occupational route that may allow men to remain upwardly mobile after involuntary unemployment.     

Women's employment patterns and occupational achievements

This paper suggests that employment patterns and occupational advancement are related: Those less extensively and less continuously employed will have less investment in human capital, fewer opportunities to move to higher positions in the occupational structure, and, consequently, less gain in occupational rewards over the work life. Here National Longitudinal Survey data for women 30 to 44 years of age in 1967 are used to examine the effects of women's employment experience on their status gains from their career beginnings to 1971. A small but significant effect of employment experience on status gain is found for whites, but not for nonwhites.     

Reevaluating the uses of status: The case of earnings determination

Status and prestige variables and measures have been central to the sociological study of individual variations in income and other dependent variables for at least 2 decades. Yet theoretical and methodological rationales for the use of such variables in the explanation of income are problematic. This conclusion, along with some similar conclusions about other uses of status and prestige variables and measures, were reached after a review of Weberian, functionalist, and other prominent discussions of the uses of status/prestige in theory and research on income. It is suggested that an emphasis upon structural attributes of jobs is more promising than a continued emphasis upon evaluatory, status/prestige conceptions of jobs for effective theorizing about income determination. A quantitative analysis of earnings shows that income effects of a common measure of socio-economic status disappear in the context of a rudimentary structural model of income. It is concluded that social scientists should move on to use more varied attributes of jobs and exercise more caution in the use of status and prestige variables.     

Response effects to attitudinal questions about domestic violence against women: A comparative perspective

According to the national Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), between 10% and 90% of women in poorer countries agree that domestic violence against women is justified. Such wide variation in women’s responses raises concerns about the comparability of the underlying attitudinal question, and the validity of comparative research that assumes comparability. Using 67 DHS conducted in 48 countries between 1995 and 2007, we explored whether cross-national variation in women’s affirmative responses to this question were explained by cross-national variation in survey design, socioeconomic conditions, or both. Variation in survey design had considerable predictive power and accounted for a non-trivial amount of the variance in women’s affirmative responses. Including the survey-design variables also modestly altered associations of the outcome with structural variables of interest in comparative studies. These findings offer insights about future analyses and data collections on women’s attitudes about domestic violence against women.     

Race Composition and Earnings: Effects by Race, Region, and Gender

For more than 40 years, studies have reported that the higher the proportion of blacks in a community, the more white men earn, but the less black men earn. Researchers have speculated that black men earned less because earnings discrimination increases with percent black. Others have suggested that the negative effect of black representation on black men's earnings reflects black men's limited occupational opportunities. This study (1) investigates whether pay discrimination and regional location condition the relationship between black representation and workers' earnings and (2) examines the relationship between black representation and earnings for women. The results, based on 1980 Census data for black and white workers from 267 SMSAs, show that black representation was associated with higher earnings for white men and lower earnings for black men in both the north and south, and that part of the effect for southern black men stemmed from earnings discrimination. Southern black men's earnings gains from black representation offset some of the effects of discrimination, while northern black men encountered costs of black representation even in the absence of earnings discrimination. These findings reflect the disparate economic opportunities of black men in each region as manufacturing jobs have disappeared from the north and relocated to the south. For women, black representation led to higher earnings for blacks and whites. I argue that black representation does not lower black women's earnings because occupational sex segregation prevents black women from threatening white men's economic status.     

Exploring the spatial wage penalty for women: Does it matter where you live?

Inequality between men and women has decreased over the past four decades in the US, but wage inequality among groups of women has increased. As metropolitan women’s earnings grew by 25% over the past four decades, nonmetropolitan women’s earnings only grew by 15%. In the current study we draw on data from the Current Population Survey to analyze the spatial wage gap among women. We explore differences in the spatial wage gap by education, occupation, and industry. Regression models that control for marriage, motherhood, race, education, region, age, and work hours indicate that metropolitan women earn 17% more per hour than nonmetropolitan women. Nonmetropolitan women earn less than metropolitan women who live in central cities and outside central cities. The gap in metropolitan-nonmetropolitan wages is higher for more educated women than for less educated women. The wage gap is only 5% for women without a high school degree, but it is 15% for women with a college degree and 26% for women with an advanced degree. Nonmetropolitan college graduates are overrepresented in lower-paying occupations and industries. Metropolitan college graduates, however, are overrepresented in higher-paying occupations and industries, such as professional services and finance.     

Sexual inequality in the workplace: An employer-specific analysis of pay differences

This paper reports an analysis of employer-specific sex differences in the processes governing the salary attainment of personnel of a large company. The two dominant theories of inequality both view discrimination as the operative cause of pay differences, but locate the structural source of discrimination at different points in the employer-employee exchange space. The wage discrimination hypothesis asserts that the economic disadvantage of women issues directly from the pay practices of employers, with women receiving “unequal pay for equal work.” The crowding, or employment segregation, hypothesis asserts that inequality issues from the employment practices of employers; disparities in the allocation of jobs and promotions results in segregation along sexual lines, with women relegated to lower-paying positions. The findings show that both wage discrimination and sexual segregation of the company's job and rank structures contribute to inequality, but that the latter is more important. The implications for the issue of discrimination are briefly discussed.     

Gender inequality in earnings in industrialized East Asia

Using data from the 2006 Family Module of the East Asian Social Survey, we use regression-based methods to decompose the sex gap in hourly wages in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. We find that Taiwan has the smallest sex gap in wages, and is also distinctive in that employed women have more education than men, on average. Japan is distinctive in the high proportion of women consigned to non-regular (temporary, often part-time) jobs, and this factor explains much more of the gap in Japan than elsewhere. Korea is distinctive in having an extremely high proportion of men who are college graduates; therefore, in Korea gender differences in education and occupational placement explain more of the gap than elsewhere. Despite many historical similarities between these societies, our analysis points out the heterogeneity within industrialized East Asia when it comes to gender inequality.     

Career mobility as a Poisson process: An application to the career dynamics of men and women in the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency from the Civil War to World War II

Poisson process models of upward mobility in job rewards are developed and estimated using event history techniques on data from one organization over a period of 80 years. The models developed permit the inclusion of independent variables which vary over a person's career and are used to analyze differences in the mobility of men and women. The main findings are (1) the career dynamics of men and women are similar in general form, both best described by a segmented, heterogeneous, and nonstationary Poisson process; (2) parametric differences exist between the models for men and women in terms of how certain independent variables affect the rate of arrival of opportunities to move up in the reward hierarchy and in terms of how others affect the rate of being given or taking advantage of such opportunities; and (3) both men and women appear to benefit by being in competition with one another for available opportunities. Theoretical interpretations of these results are discussed in relation to differences in the flow of opportunities to locations in the reward hierarchy occupied predominantly by men versus those occupied predominantly by women.     

The declining earnings gap between young women and men in the United States, 1979–2018

We examine the dynamics of the gender earnings gap over the 1979 to 2018 period among full-time workers aged 25–29, focusing on the role of marital status and the presence of children. Using data from multiple years of the Current Population Survey, we find that the earnings gap declined among all groups of men and women, and by 2018 there was earnings parity among the those who were not married and without children. The share of people in this group also grew over the period, and comprised a majority of both men and women by 2018. We also find that while marriage was associated with lower earnings among women in 1979, by 2018 it was associated with higher earnings, suggesting greater positive selection of women with high earnings potential into marriage. The positive association between marriage and earnings among men remained stable. While we found a persistent earnings penalty for having children among women over the period, we found an emerging dampening effect of having children over time among men, which suggests that greater participation in childcare among men has led to lower earnings than in the past (i.e., a causal connection) and/or an emerging selection effect of young men more interested in childrearing over time, perhaps reflecting a cultural shift.     

The Dynamic Interdependence of Women′s Employment and Fertility

Research on the causal relationship between women′s fertility and their employment patterns has yielded contradictory findings. In order to shed some light on the confusion that has resulted, hazard models are used to investigate the possibility these two variables are dynamically interdependent. Transition rates among combined states of pregnancy and fertility are analyzed for a data set consisting of joint work and fertility event histories for a national sample of young white and black women. The results lend support to the interdependence thesis. Pregnancy and motherhood increase the rate at which women leave employment and decrease their reentry rate. Furthermore, I find that women′s wages, and for white women, employment status as well, are negatively and significantly related to their rate of becoming pregnant.     

Motivation vs. relevance: Using strong ties to find a job in Urban China

While the idea that contacts matter in finding a job is intuitively appealing, we still do not know—after decades of research—how and why strong ties benefit job seekers. To resolve this confusion, we need to theorize how specific characteristics of ties are related to the mechanisms that make job search through contacts effective. We have reasons to expect that, while a contact’s motivation influences the likelihood that a job seeker receives an offer, her homophily with the job seeker on occupation and other job-relevant attributes influences the quality of the offer. The use of strong ties among university students to find jobs in China provides a unique opportunity to empirically isolate the relationship between contact characteristics and the mechanisms through which contacts benefit the job seeker. I tested my hypotheses with data on both the successful and unsuccessful job searches of 478 graduates of China’s flagship universities, who, as first-time job seekers, primarily used strong ties. Survey results are consistent with my hypotheses: job seekers who used strong ties to look for jobs had more offers—but not better offers—than those who used only formal methods.     

Educational indicators and occupational achievement

Many sociological and economic studies assume that the variable, Highest Grade Completed in School, is by itself an adequate measure of people's education for the purpose of explaining their occupational achievement. Use of Highest Grade Completed as the sole measure of education has at least two major shortcomings. It assumes people have (1) learned the same amount of (2) the same thing in an academic year. Supplementary education indicators are identified and tested to see if they have a substantial impact on occupational prestige or earnings. Background social statuses and Highest Grade Completed are controlled for in this test. Only measures of subject matter studied in high school or college have a statistically significant relationship with occupational achievement net of Highest Grade Completed and social background variables. Highest Grade Completed is quite adequate in measuring the impact of education on occupational achievement without help from the measures of subject matter studied.