The Narrowing of the U.S. Gender Earnings Gap, 1959-1999: A Cohort-Based Analysis

Catherine Weinberger and Peter Kuhn

No 12115, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Using Census and Current Population Survey data spanning 1959 through 1999, we assess the relative contributions of two factors to the decline in the gender wage gap: changes across cohorts in the relative slopes of men's and women's age-earnings profiles, versus changes in relative earnings levels at labor market entry. We find that changes in relative slopes account for about one-third of the narrowing of the gender wage gap over the past 40 years. Under quite general conditions, we argue that this provides an upper bound estimate of the contribution of changes in work experience and other post-school investments (PSIs) to the decline of the gender wage gap.

JEL-codes: J7 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec and nep-lab
Note: LS
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w12115.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Narrowing of the U.S. Gender Earnings Gap, 1959-1999: A Cohort-Based Analysis (2006)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:12115

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w12115

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().