Sex and Income Inequality among the Employed
In: The annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Volume 409, p. 42-52
ISSN: 0002-7162
Discrimination in the labor market has received considerable attention in the last 2 decades. Racial aspects have been a primary concern, but the question of discrimination against F's has assumed an increasing importance. Despite statements of alleged discrimination against women, there is a paucity of empirical evidence. For the most part, the evidence cited, including that in gov'al studies, is based upon comparisons of gross earnings by sex obtained from census studies or studies of particular industries. The purpose of this study is to isolate pure measures of wage discrimination on the basis of sex, within narrowly defined occup's. The measures are pure in that factors other than sex, to which wage diff'ials might be attributed, are taken into account. The results of the analysis of wages in 4 narrowly defined occup's clearly suggest that wage discrimination has a sex dimension. A sex variable is consistently powerful in explaining wage dispersion. Moreover, the estimated sex diff'ials generally exceed those related to color, often by considerable amounts. This finding poses obvious theoretical questions. If the wage for labor is determined under free market conditions, the continued existence of discrimination seems implausible in the absence of real diff's in productivity among sex & color groups. This suggests that there are diff's in the supply & demand curves relating to diff groups of labor which arise out of subjective, rather than objective, factors. HA.
