Why Did Gender Wage Convergence in the United States Stall? / Peter Q. Blair, Benjamin Posmanick.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Blair, Peter Q.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Posmanick, Benjamin.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w30821.

NBER working paper series no. w30821

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2023.

Summary:

During the 1980s, the wage gap between white women and white men in the US declined by approximately 1 percentage point per year. In the decades since, the rate of gender wage convergence has stalled to less than one-third of its previous value. An outstanding puzzle in economics is "why did gender wage convergence in the US stall?" Using an event study design that exploits the timing of state and federal family-leave policies, we show that the introduction of the policies can explain 94% of the reduction in the rate of gender wage convergence that is unaccounted for after controlling for changes in observable characteristics of workers. If gender wage convergence had continued at the pre-family leave rate, wage parity between white women and white men would have been achieved as early as 2017.

Notes:

Print version record

January 2023.