Search results

The changes in women’s and men’s work lives have been considerable in recent decades. Yet much of the recent research on gender differences in employment and earnings has been of a more snapshot nature rather than taking a longer comparative look at evolving patterns. In this paper, we use 50 years (1964–2013) of US Census Annual Demographic Files (March Current Population Survey) to track the changing returns to human capital (measured as both educational attainment and potential work experience), estimating comparable earnings equations by gender at each point in time. We consider the effects of sample selection over time for both women and men and show the rising effect of selection for women in recent years. Returns to education diverge for women and men over this period in the selection-adjusted results but converge in the OLS results, while returns to potential experience converge in both sets of results. We also create annual calculations of synthetic lifetime labor force participation, hours, and earnings that indicate convergence by gender in worklife patterns, but less convergence in recent years in lifetime earnings. Thus, while some convergence has indeed occurred, the underlying mechanisms causing convergence differ for women and men, reflecting continued fundamental differences in women’s and men’s life experiences.

We analyze the evolution of the gender wage gap in Mexico between 1989 and 2012, a period in which skill-biased technological change accelerated. We deviate from most prior work investigating the gap across the wage distribution. We find substantial gender wage convergence in the decade of the 2000s at the mean and, more markedly, at the upper and lower ends of the wage distribution, alongside little change in the median wage gap. The gender wage gap at the 90th percentile was largely eliminated by the year 2012 and, at the 10th percentile, it narrowed by a fourth of its 1990 level. This narrowing of gender inequality in wages occurred alongside a narrowing of inequality in wages within each gender group. The share of college-educated women relative to men in the work force grew substantially over the two decades, and they sorted disproportionately into brain-intensive occupations, where the gender wage gap fell sharply. The wage return to being in a brain-intensive occupation was, in both periods, greater for women; it declined for men while rising for women during the 2000s. Our findings demonstrate how structural economic change may interact with a biologically premised comparative advantage of women in brain-intensive occupations to raise their relative wages. Our results also underline the relevance of studying changes across the wage distribution.

The paper attempts to project the future trend of the gender wage gap in Great Britain up to 2031.

The empirical analysis utilises the British Household Panel Study Wave F together with Office for National Statistics (ONS) demographic projections. The methodology combines the ONS projections with assumptions relating to the evolution of educational attainment in order to project the future distribution of human capital skills and consequently the future size of the gender wage gap.

The analysis suggests that gender wage convergence will be slow, with little female progress by 2031 unless there is a large rise in returns to female experience.

The paper has projected the pattern of male and female skill acquisition together with the associated trend in wages up to 2031.

This paper documents how gender differences in occupational status (defined by earnings, education, and returns to skills) have evolved over time and across generations. The paper finds a persistent gender earnings gap, a reversal of the education gap, and a convergence in starting salaries and returns to experience. Divergent occupational choices might explain part of the persistent gender gaps and women’s failure to reach parity with men in the earnings distribution. Women choose more flexible jobs than men. But whereas men dominate women in high-powered occupations, they are also more likely to be in low-skilled low-pay occupations. Differential effects of children and time spent keeping house explain most of the gender gap in high-powered occupations but cannot explain fully why women choose more flexible occupations.

This chapter provides an overview of the results from a cross-nationally comparative project analysing gender differences and inequalities at labour market entry. Women’s relative gains in educational attainment and the expansion of the service sector suggest that gender inequalities in occupational returns are diminishing or even reversing. In assessing gender differences at labour market entry, we look at a phase of the life course when women’s family roles are still of minor importance. Conceptually, we distinguish between horizontal segregation and inequalities in vertical outcomes. The project was based on 13 in-depth case studies contributed by a network of scholars analysing countries with different institutional, socio-economic and cultural settings. The findings demonstrate that occupational gender segregation is still relatively marked among recent cohorts, though it is slightly decreasing over time in several countries. In terms of vertical inequalities, the case studies consistently revealed that while women enter more prestigious jobs than men in most countries, there is a female disadvantage in economic returns among recent labour market entrants. In addition, we found mixed evidence on the variations of gender equality at labour market entry across countries with different institutional characteristics.

This paper uses data from the 1979 and 1997 National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth to estimate the changing returns to cognitive and non-cognitive skills with respect to college completion, and quantifies the extent to which gender differences in these skills are driving the college gender gap. The use of two distinct college graduation cohorts allows a dynamic analysis of the widening female advantage in college graduation. I decompose the increase in the college gender gap into three pertinent categories of measurable attributes: family background, cognitive skills, and non-cognitive skills (captured by school suspensions, behavioral problems, and legal infractions). A second decomposition is applied to the change in the gap between the two periods. The results show that roughly half of the observed college graduation gender gap in the NLSY97 is due to female advantages in observable characteristics, and roughly half is “unexplained”: due to gender differences in the coefficients. With respect to the change in the gap, approximately 29% of the difference in differences is the “explained” component, attributed to changes in the relative characteristics of men and women. In particular, declining non-cognitive skills in men are associated with about 14% of the increase in the gender gap.

In this chapter, I attempt to extend insights regarding statistical aggregates from scholars, such as Hayek (1931) and Mises (1947), to the topic of inequality. Using the work of Lindert and Williamson (2016), I show that a disaggregation of inequality into some of its many subcomponents alters our reading of its evolution. While I only work with stylized facts from the field of economic history, and the authors argues that the promising implications derived from disaggregation militate in favor of more effort being directed toward decomposing the evolution of inequality.

This paper aimed to examine the role of social factors and individual factors on alcohol drinking in a licensed premise.

An unobtrusive covert systematic observational study of 632 licensed premise patrons was conducted during May 2015.

Convergence between genders was observed with females drinking as much and as long as males; 57.9 per cent of patrons drank two and more servings, exceeding daily recommended amounts. Social factors such as group size are more influential on drinking than individual factors such as gender and smoking status. Serving practices such as straws and buying drinks in rounds influence the quantity of alcohol consumed.

The study focussed on one licensed premise. Replication of the method outlined in the current study in different licensed venues, states and countries will permit the role of policy, drinking environments and drinking cultures to be understood.

Drinking patterns of both genders are converging. Thus, intervention efforts should target both genders.

This paper contributes a structured observation protocol that extends our understanding of alcohol drinking beyond quantity by incorporating observation of duration of consumption for each serve, permitting identification of social and environmental factors that can be used to lower licensed premise alcohol drinking.

Recent worldwide gains in girls’ schooling are raising new questions about the continued relevance of gender for educational inequality. At issue is whether the time has come to shift the policy focus away from gender to socioeconomic status. Answers to this question, we suggest, depend on how gender gaps close, i.e., do they close irreversibly, evenly, and faster than socio-economic (SES)-related inequality?

Against this background and building on contrasted sociological perspectives on inequality, our chapter examines the recent convergence trajectories of several sub-Saharan countries, asking if these trajectories warrant a policy shift away from gender.

Our findings are mixed. Although, the magnitude of sex-related inequality in schooling is consistently smaller than SES-related inequality, the process of gender convergence remains reversible and it unfolds in top-down fashion. Such findings warrant continued attention to gender in sub-Saharan Africa, but with particular focus on poor girls and on synergies that address both female and poor children. This conclusion supports theoretical advances that transcend the Manichean divide between focus on cultural recognition and socioeconomic redistribution.

Gender swapping – when gamers choose avatars of the opposite gender to their own – is a common feature of online gaming behavior, and recent studies have explored the reasons for it. However, no study has yet examined the role gender swapping plays in determining gamers’ continual engagement with communication via online games, i.e., online gamer loyalty. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to examine this issue and develop hypotheses based on interdependence theory in the online gaming context.

Responses from a survey of 255 online gamers were used for the analysis.

Analytical results using structural equation modeling indicate that gender-swapping behavior is negatively related to social intelligence, which in turn is negatively related to network convergence (the extent of sharing a common social circle), thus contributing to relational switching costs and online gamer loyalty.

This study is the first to examine how gender swapping affects online gamer loyalty.