Is There Intersectional Labor Market Discrimination?

Joanne S. McLaughlin and David Neumark

No 33388, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We present new and rich evidence on intersectional discrimination in labor markets, focusing on wages in the traditional residual wage differential approach to discrimination. We interpret “intersectional discrimination” in the framework of interactions, in which discrimination along two intersecting dimensions leads to discrimination that exceeds the sum of its parts. We make three contributions. First, we resolve puzzling contradictory findings on intersectional discrimination in existing research – with studies using similar data and methods reaching diametrically opposite conclusions. Second, we extend the analysis of potential intersectional discrimination to more dimensions than have typically been considered in past research. Third, we explore issues of bias in the wage equations we estimate from selection on employment. Our overall conclusion from these different types of evidence is that there is little or no evidence consistent with intersectional discrimination in wage differentials among the large set of groups (and combinations of groups) we study, and indeed most evidence points in the opposite direction.

JEL-codes: J7 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma and nep-ltv
Note: LS
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w33388.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.

Related works:
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:33388

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w33388
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

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 ().