Who Cares – and Does it Matter? Measuring Wage Penalties for Caring Work☆Helpful comments were received from Paula England, Meghan Skira, Aaron Sojourner, the editors, referees, and participants at the IZA Workshop and a Georgia State University seminar. Julia Manzella appreciates funding received from the Dan E. Sweat Dissertation Fellowship designed to support research addressing urban, community, or education policy issues

Barry Hirsch () and Julia Manzella

A chapter in Gender Convergence in the Labor Market, 2015, vol. 41, pp 213-275 from Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Abstract: Economists and sociologists have proposed arguments for why there can exist wage penalties for work involving helping and caring for others, penalties borne disproportionately by women. Evidence on wage penalties is neither abundant nor compelling. We examine wage differentials associated with caring jobs using multiple years of Current Population Survey (CPS) earnings files matched to O*NET job descriptors that provide continuous measures of “assisting & caring” and “concern” for others across all occupations. This approach differs from prior studies that assume occupations either do or do not require a high level of caring. Cross-section and longitudinal analyses are used to examine wage differences associated with the level of caring, conditioned on worker, location, and job attributes. Wage level estimates suggest substantive caring penalties, particularly among men. Longitudinal estimates based on wage changes among job switchers indicate smaller wage penalties, our preferred estimate being a 2% wage penalty resulting from a one standard deviation increase in our caring index. We find little difference in caring wage gaps across the earnings distribution. Measuring mean levels of caring across the U.S. labor market over nearly thirty years, we find a steady upward trend, but overall changes are small and there is no evidence of convergence between women and men.

Keywords: Caring wage penalties; occupational job attributes; gender wage gaps; J16; J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... 7-912120140000041014
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)

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:eme:rleczz:s0147-912120140000041014

DOI: 10.1108/S0147-912120140000041014

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Research in Labor Economics from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().