Why Did Gender Wage Convergence in the United States Stall?

Peter Blair (peter_blair@gse.harvard.edu) and Benjamin Posmanick (bposmani@sbu.edu)
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Peter Blair: Harvard Graduate School of Education
Benjamin Posmanick: St. Bonaventure University

No 2023-001, Working Papers from Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: gender wage gap; Family and Medical Leave Act; family leave (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J16 J31 J32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-gen, nep-his and nep-lab
Note: MIP
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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http://humcap.uchicago.edu/RePEc/hka/wpaper/Blair_ ... onvergence-stall.pdf First version, January 11, 2023 (application/pdf)

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