Trends in the Male‐Female Wage Gap: The 1980s Compared with the 1970s

Solomon Polachek and John Robst

Southern Economic Journal, 2001, vol. 67, issue 4, 869-888

Abstract: Despite a more rapid increase in female work behavior in the 1970s than in the 1980s, the male‐female wage gap in the 1970s narrowed one‐eighth as quickly as in the 1980s. This paper uses 1972 through 1988 Panel Study of Income Dynamics data to explain why women's wages rose less quickly in the 1970s. It illustrates how new female labor market entrants in the 1970s brought down mean female wages, thereby driving down female wage growth. This decline played itself out in the 1980s as the relative growth in female labor market entrants diminished and as the proportion of women's potential work years actually worked increased.

Date: 2001
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2325-8012.2001.tb00378.x

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:wly:soecon:v:67:y:2001:i:4:p:869-888

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Southern Economic Journal from John Wiley & Sons
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().