Gender differences in the impact of job mobility on earnings: The role of occupational segregation

In recent years, researchers have begun to explore the extent to which the impact of switching firms (inter-firm mobility) on wages varies between men and women. Using data from the NLSY79 from 1979 to 2012, this paper extends existing research by exploring how occupational segregation and individual level factors contribute to gender differences in the impact of voluntary inter-firm mobility on wages. The paper also examines how patterns vary depending on education level. Findings suggest that men without a college education receive greater wage gains from voluntary inter-firm mobility than similarly educated women although there is no overall gender difference for individuals with a bachelor's degree. The wage returns to voluntary inter-firm mobility for both men and women increase as a function of the male representation in the occupation. For individuals without a college education, the male premium to voluntary inter-firm mobility is largest in highly male dominated occupations. However, women with a bachelor's degree employed in highly male dominated occupations use voluntary inter-firm mobility to narrow the gender wage gap.     

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.     

Enduring an Economic Crisis: The Effect of Macroeconomic Shocks on Intragenerational Mobility in Japan

After the burst of its "bubble" economy in 1989, Japan experienced an astonishingly long economic recession whose gravity surpassed any seen in the industrialized world since the 1930s. While this recession is likely to have important consequences on the well-known workplace arrangements and career mobility patterns in that country, systematic analyses of such consequences are nearly absent. This study examines changes in the rates and directions of job mobility in Japan using work history data collected in 2005 from a nationally representative sample of men and women. I find evidence that Japanese firms have largely retained the core elements of the permanent employment system. The norm that stresses men's loyalty to their employers, however, appears to have weakened, resulting in higher voluntary job turnover among male workers. In addition, the gender gap in lifetime mobility processes has narrowed, but not because Japanese women have gained opportunities in the workplace. Rather, economic stagnation has led to greater fluctuations in employment and wages over men's life course, thereby closing the gender gap. Beyond illustrating the changing stratification process in Japan, the findings have general implications for understanding how economic crises impact employment relations, institutional transformations, and social change in advanced industrialized countries.     

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.     

Heterogeneity in returns to college education: selection bias in contemporary taiwan

The causal impact of higher education on earnings may be heterogeneous across different members of a population. Using a newly developed instrumental-variable method in economics, we illustrate heterogeneous treatment effects of higher education on earnings resulting from sorting mechanisms that select individuals with certain unobserved attributes into college education. The setting of our empirical work is contemporary Taiwan - a transitional economy that has recently experienced a rapid expansion in higher education. We find distinct patterns by gender, with selection bias most clearly shown among women but not among men: the college return to earnings is on average greater for women who actually attended college than women who did not attend college.     

Why is the sex gap in feelings of depression wider in high gender equity countries? The effect of children on the psychological well-being of men and women

This study uses data from 23 countries in the World Values Survey and the National Survey of Families and Households and finds that the sex gap in feelings of depression is wider in high gender equity societies even though overall levels of feelings of depression are lower. Using hierarchical logistic modeling, we find that the sex difference in feelings of depression is wider in high gender equity societies because children increase depression for women in high gender equity societies, while they reduce depression for women without paid employment in low gender equity societies. There is little difference in the effect of children on feelings of depression for men across societies.     

He said, she said: The gender wage gap according to self and proxy reports in the Current Population Survey

Roughly half the labor force data in the Current Population Survey (CPS) are provided by proxy respondents, and since 1979, men’s reliance on proxies has dropped dramatically while women’s reliance on proxies has increased. Few authors, however, have examined how combining these first-hand and second-hand reports may influence our understanding of long-term economic trends. We exploit the outgoing rotation group structure of the CPS by matching individual records one year apart, and we find that self-reported wages are higher than proxy-reported wages even after controlling for all time invariant characteristics. Furthermore, we find that changes in the use of proxy respondents by men and women since 1979 have made current estimates of the gender wage gap larger than they would have been without changes in reporting status. This suggests that the gender wage gap has closed more than previously estimated. We recommend that researchers combine self and proxy responses with great care, especially when analyzing time trends or making gender comparisons.     

2001～2010年妇女社会地位变迁调查：解析一个直辖市样本

前后10年两次调查统计数据表明,随着经济社会的发展,重庆女性健康及保健状况明显改善;女性教育结构有所改善,男女受教育差距逐渐缩小;女性决定个人事务的自主性提高。但数据也显示,女性在业率偏低,两性劳动收入差距较大;女性拥有的财产大大低于男性;妇女参与决策和管理仍面临障碍;性别歧视现象仍不同程度存在,妇女发展环境亟待改善。应倡导男女平等观念,增强女性自我发展意识;多层次制定有利于维护妇女权益的政策法规：从教育着手提升农村妇女发展能力;大力发展公共服务业,减轻妇女家务负担;营造妇女发展的良好环境。     

How (not) to make women work?

Women in developed economies have experienced an unparalleled increase in employment rates, to the point that the gap with respect to men was cut in half. This positive trend has often been attributed to changes in the opportunity costs of working (e.g. access to caring facilities) and the opportunity costs of not-working (notably, relative growth in wages in positions more frequently occupied by women, improved educational attainment). Meanwhile, the gender employment gaps were stagnant in transition economies. Admittedly, employment equality among genders was initially much higher in transition countries.We exploit this unique evidence from transition and advanced countries, to analyze the relationship between the institutional environment and the (adjusted) gender employment gaps. We estimate comparable gender employment gaps on nearly 1500 micro databases from over 40 countries. Changes in both types of the opportunity costs exhibited strong correlation with gender employment equality where the gap was larger, i.e. advanced economies. We provide some evidence that these results are not explained away by transition-related phenomena. We argue that the observed divergence in time trends reflects a level effect: the lower the gender employment gap, the lower the strength of the relationship between gender employment equality and the opportunity costs of working. An implication from our study is that the existing instruments might be insufficient to further reduce the gender employment gap.     

从"性别差距"看美国女性在选举中的地位

随着女性参政意识的增强,美国女性逐渐在选民中占居多数,大选中的"性别差距"引起了人们的注意。自1980年以来,"性别差距"在美国历次大选中表现明显,其存在的根本原因在于男女在政治、经济和社会地位等方面的不平等,致使女性对一些问题的看法与男性有所差异,因此在大选中也显示出了差距。对"性别差距"的研究从各个侧面揭示了女性选举的特点及其选票的分布情况,对美国总统候选人的竞选活动或执政者的策略制定都有很高的参考价值。     

Depression in later life: A closer look at the gender gap

Gender differences in depressive symptoms have been extensively documented, with women reporting a higher number of depressive symptoms than men. However, studies offer different explanations for why such a gap exists. The goal of the current paper is to analyze how much of the observed gender gap in depression may be attributed to (1) compositional versus (2) reporting differences or (3) differences in reactivity to adversities. We contribute to this literature by testing, net of compositional differences, whether the relationship between reporting behavior and depressive symptoms is gendered and whether accounting for the possibility of gender-specific reactivity alters the structure of the gender gap at older ages. Our results show that the observed gender gap in depression (1) only partially derives from compositional differences; (2) is not an artifact of a gender-specific reporting style; and remarkably (3) men appear more sensitive to adversities.     

Collective religiosity and the gender gap in attitudes towards economic redistribution in 86 countries, 1990–2008

What is the relationship between gender and the demand for redistribution? Because, on average, women face more economic deprivation than men, in many countries women favor redistribution more than men. However, this is not the case in a number of other countries, where women do not support redistribution more than men. To explain this cross-national paradox, we stress the role of collective religiosity. In many religions, theological principles both militate against public policies designed to redistribute income, and also promote traditionally gendered patterns of work and family involvement. Hence, we hypothesize that, in those countries where religion remains influential either through closer church-state ties or an intensely religious population, men and women should differ less in their attitudes towards redistribution. Drawing upon the World Values Survey, we estimate three-level regression models that test our religiosity-based approach and two alternative explanations in 86 countries and 175 country-years. The results are consistent with our hypothesis. Moreover, in further support of our theoretical approach, societal religiosity undermines pro-redistribution preferences more among women than men. Our findings suggest that collective religiosity matters more to the gender gap in redistributive attitudes than traditional political and labor force factors.     

Educational assortative mating and time use in the home

This study examines the association between individuals' educational assortative mating and time spent on child care and housework. Focus is put on hypogamous couples, or couples in which wives have more education than their husbands. Relative resources and gender revolution frameworks are considered as contexts to explain why hypogamous couples may share their time differently than other couples. A series of ordinary least squares regressions with population and sampling weights are employed using American Time Use Survey data from 2003 to 2018. Three, separate analyses using relative education, gender, and all educational pairings as the independent variables of interest are presented with child care and housework as the dependent variables. The current findings show that men in hypogamous marriages perform about 10 min more of child care per day on average than their peers in hypergamous and homogamous marriages, and that this comes primarily from basic care activities. This accounts for approximately 43% of the difference between men and women in the average amount of time spent on child care. No clear pattern of significance is apparent comparing individuals’ time spent on housework by relative education, suggesting that housework and child care have evolved differently in the context of gendered domestic responsibilities. Men in hypogamous marriages are more egalitarian in their sharing of child care. However, this is only true for couples in which men have at least a high school diploma and women are highly educated.     

Housework share between partners: Experimental evidence on gender-specific preferences

This paper uses a novel vignette-based experimental design to investigate the reasons underlying the gendered division of housework. We are particularly interested in the role of gender-specific preferences: are there differences in the utility that men and women derive from housework, and might these be responsible for the fact that women continue to do more housework than men? It is difficult to address these questions with conventional survey data, because of inherent problems with endogeneity and ex-post rationalization; our experimental design circumvents these problems. We find remarkably little evidence of any systematic gender differences in preferences, and a general inclination towards an equal distribution of housework; this suggests that the reasons for the gendered division of housework do not derive from gender differences in preferences, and must lie elsewhere.     

Period effects,cohort effects,and the narrowing gender wage gap

Despite the abundance of sociological research on the gender wage gap, questions remain. In particular, the role of cohorts is under investigated. Using data from the Current Population Survey, we use age–period–cohort analysis to uniquely estimate age, period, and cohort effects on the gender wage gap. The narrowing of the gender wage gap that occurred between 1975 and 2009 is largely due to cohort effects. Since the mid-1990s, the gender wage gap has continued to close absent of period effects. While gains in female wages contributed to declines in the gender wage gap for cohorts born before 1950, for later cohorts the narrowing of the gender wage gap is primarily a result of declines in male wages.     

The Effect of Occupational Sex Composition on the Gender Gap in Workplace Authority

This article compares women and men's attainment of workplace authority in female-dominated, mixed, and male-dominated occupations. It is based on a representative mobility study of Jewish women in the Israeli labor force conducted in 1991–1992. Two sets of hypotheses are offered based on two competing theories. The first theory predicts that in female occupations women have more influence and mutual support than in male occupations, and, hence, they will have more access to authority. The opposing perspective argues that in male-dominated occupations the competition between women and men is weaker, and therefore men have a smaller incentive to discriminate against women. Our findings support the second argument. The gender gap in authority is larger in female-dominated occupations, and women have the highest chances to have authority when they work in male occupations; men have similar chances, no matter in which type of occupation they are employed.     

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.     

Education and risky sex in Africa: Unraveling the link between women’s education and reproductive health behaviors in Kenya

Much research attention has been devoted to understanding the relationship between education and riskier sex-related behaviors and HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. While in the early 1990s researchers found that increases in education were associated with a higher incidence of HIV/AIDS, this relationship appears to have reversed and better educated people, especially women, appear less likely to engage in riskier sex-related behaviors and have a lower incidence rate of HIV/AIDS. Our study begins to unravel the mechanisms that could explain why women’s educational attainment is associated with safer sex-related behaviors in sub-Saharan Africa. Using data from the 2003 Kenyan Demographic and Health Survey, we examine the potential mediating effects of HIV/AIDS knowledge, family planning discussions, gender empowerment, and husband’s education for explaining the relationship between education and age of first sex, casual sex, multiple sex partners, and condom use. We find that gender empowerment partially explains the relationship between education and age of first sex, and HIV/AIDS knowledge, husband’s education, and family planning discussions partially explain the relationship between education and condom use. We argue that gender inequality and lack of knowledge are likely to play a greater role in explaining the relationship between woman’s education and sex-related behaviors in sub-Saharan Africa than they do in more industrialized nations, where social capital explanations may have more explanatory power.     

Gender and venture capital decision-making: The effects of technical background and social capital on entrepreneurial evaluations

Research on gender and workplace decision-making tends to address either supply-side disparities between men’s and women’s human and social capital, or demand-side differences in the status expectations of women and men workers. In addition, this work often relies on causal inferences drawn from empirical data collected on worker characteristics and their workplace outcomes. In this study, we demonstrate how tangible education and work history credentials – typically associated with supply-side characteristics – work in tandem with cultural beliefs about gender to influence the evaluative process that underlies venture capital decisions made in high-growth, high-tech entrepreneurship. Using an experimental design, we simulate funding decisions by venture capitalists (VCs) for men and women entrepreneurs that differ in technical background and the presence of important social ties. We demonstrate the presence of two distinct aspects of VCs’ evaluation: that of the venture and that of the entrepreneur, and find that the gender of the entrepreneur influences evaluations most when the person, rather than the venture, is the target of evaluation. Technical background qualifications moderate the influence of gendered expectations, and women receive more of a payoff than men from having a close contact to the evaluating VC. We discuss the implications for future research on gender and work.     

Sex stratification in the workplace: Male-female differences in economic returns to occupation

Employing data from the 1974–1977 NORC General Social Surveys, I investigate differences in the earnings attainment of currently employed white men and women age 25 to 64. I focus special attention on the explanatory effects of job characteristics other than those traditionally employed in prestige and status-defined earnings models. The results, based on a multivariate regression analysis and a regression standardization procedure, suggest that a nontrivial portion of the earnings gap between men and women is due to women's concentration in jobs which are low-paying and heavily female and because women are less likely than men to exercise authority in their jobs or to control the means of production. Including these factors in an earnings model statistically increases women's earnings as a percentage of men's by over 7%, accounting for approximately 13% of the earnings gap. Net of these job characteristics, gender differences in industry distribution are not substantively important in explaining why women earn less than men, accounting for only 0.4% of the earnings gap. When single women's earnings are adjusted to take account of their occupational concentration, 10% of the male-single female earnings gap is explained, providing preliminary evidence that the job characteristics I specify are not mere proxies for work experience. Including job characteristics as measures of the context of employment thus usefully extends the human capital and prestige or statusdefined models traditionally employed in explanations of the male-female earnings differential.