The Emergence of Wage Discrimination in U.S. Manufacturing

Joyce Burnette

Working Papers from U.S. Census Bureau, Center for Economic Studies

Abstract: This paper examines the hypothesis that wage discrimination emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century. I test for wage discrimination by estimating the female-male productivity ratio from samples of manufacturing firms in the northeast, and then comparing the estimated productivity ratio to the wage ratio. I find that women did not face wage discrimination in manufacturing during the nineteenth century. In 1900 there was wage discrimination against women in white-collar jobs, but not in blue-collar jobs. Wage discrimination persisted, and in 2002 the female-male wage ratio was less than the productivity ratio.

Pages: 46 pages
Date: 2011-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-his and nep-lab
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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https://www2.census.gov/ces/wp/2011/CES-WP-11-18.pdf First version, 2011 (application/pdf)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cen:wpaper:11-18

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