The Gender Earnings Gap among College-Educated Workers

Abstract

The gender earnings gap among full-time workers narrowed substantially in the 1980s. Previous research has established that increases in the amount of and returns to work experience and schooling among women were primarily responsible for that trend. This paper, which uses data from the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972 and the High School and Beyond Senior Cohort (Class of 1980), examines to what extent college schooling characteristics other than number of years, such as grades and major field, contributed to the narrowing of the gap. Changes in the estimated effects of college grades and college major, the author finds, can account for almost all of the large decline in the gender earnings gap between 1979 and 1986 among young college-educated workers. Most of this effect apparently resulted from growth in the market price of women's skills relative to men's for a given major.

Effects of college programme characteristics on graduates’ performance

“…In line with the literature, the results show that female graduates earn less than their male counterparts, and that age (capturing work experience) and father's education level had a positive effect (Loury, 1997;Oaxaca and Ransom, 1999;García-Aracil, 2008 effect of discipline on income (Wolbers, 2007;Vila et al, 2007).…”

Gender Wage Disparities among the Highly Educated

“…Male-dominated majors, such as chemical engineering, may generally have higher returns than such female-dominated majors as elementary education, and these differences in pre-labor market choices are a potentially crucial part of the story in understanding the gender wage gap among the well educated. The role of college major on earnings and the impact on gender wage gaps in the U.S. has been documented in several studies, including Altonji (1993), Brown and Corcoran (1997), Eide (1994), Graham and Smith (2005), Grogger and Eide (1995), Joy (2003), Loury (1997), McDonald and Thornton (2007), Paglin and Rufolo (1990), Turner and Bowen (1999), and Weinberger ( , 1999. While all of these studies report that college major is associated with some portion of the wage gap, they differ in the size attributed to college major; in our reading, much of this difference is the result of the extent of aggregation of the college majors; the finer the detail in the measurement of college major, the greater the fraction of the wage gap that is explained by the major.…”

Do Faculty Serve as Role Models? The Impact of Instructor Gender on Female Students

“…While women have made progress in recent years, only 20 percent of engineering students are female, and the proportion of women receiving degrees in the sciences and engineering in the United States lags that of other industrialized countries (National Center for Education Statistics, 1995). This underrepresentation of women may have serious implications for women's returns to education and may relate to occupational segregation and earnings inequality by gender (Linda Loury, 1997). As the economy shifts to favor these more male-dominated fields, there is concern that women will not be prepared to succeed.…”