The Gender Earnings Gap in the Gig Economy: Evidence from over a Million Rideshare Drivers / Cody Cook, Rebecca Diamond, Jonathan Hall, John A. List, Paul Oyer.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cook, Cody.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Diamond, Rebecca.

Hall, Jonathan.

List, John A.

Oyer, Paul.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w24732.

NBER working paper series no. w24732

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Other Title:

Gender Earnings Gap in the Gig Economy

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2018.

Summary:

The growth of the "gig" economy generates worker flexibility that, some have speculated, will favor women. We explore this by examining labor supply choices and earnings among more than a million rideshare drivers on Uber in the U.S. We document a roughly 7% gender earnings gap amongst drivers. We completely explain this gap and show that it can be entirely attributed to three factors: experience on the platform (learning-by-doing), preferences over where to work (driven largely by where drivers live and, to a lesser extent, safety), and preferences for driving speed. We do not find that men and women are differentially affected by a taste for specific hours, a return to within-week work intensity, or customer discrimination. Our results suggest that there is no reason to expect the "gig" economy to close gender differences. Even in the absence of discrimination and in flexible labor markets, women's relatively high opportunity cost of non-paid-work time and gender-based differences in preferences and constraints can sustain a gender pay gap.

Notes:

Print version record

June 2018.