The Glass Ceiling and The Paper Floor: Gender Differences among Top Earners, 1981-2012 / Fatih Guvenen, Greg Kaplan, Jae Song.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Guvenen, Fatih.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Kaplan, Greg.

Song, Jae.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w20560.

NBER working paper series no. w20560

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Other Title:

Glass Ceiling and The Paper Floor

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2014.

Summary:

We analyze changes in the gender structure at the top of the earnings distribution in the United States over the last 30 years using a 10% sample of individual earnings histories from the Social Security Administration. Despite making large inroads, females still constitute a small proportion of the top percentiles: the glass ceiling, albeit a thinner one, remains. We measure the contribution of changes in labor force participation, changes in the persistence of top earnings, and changes in industry and age composition to the change in the gender composition of top earners. A large proportion of the increased share of females among top earners is accounted for by the mending of, what we refer to as, the paper floor - the phenomenon whereby female top earners were much more likely than male top earners to drop out of the top percentiles. We also provide new evidence at the top of the earnings distribution for both genders: the rising share of top earnings accruing to workers in the Finance and Insurance industry, the relative transitory status of top earners, the emergence of top earnings gender gaps over the life cycle, and gender differences among lifetime top earners.

Notes:

Print version record

October 2014.