The Gender Gap in Starting Salaries for New College Graduates

Robert Thornton and Judith A. McDonald

A chapter in Gender in the Labor Market, 2015, vol. 42, pp 205-229 from Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Abstract: Using a unique data set from the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), we estimate the gender starting-salary gap for college graduates from 2000 to 2010. Simulation techniques are used to estimate how the salary gap would change if women had selected the same majors or job types as men. We find that about 90% of the starting-salary gap is explainable by gender differences in majors and types of job offers – a higher percentage than found in most other studies. Duncan indexes of dissimilarity also indicate that the gender distributions of job offers by college major and type of first jobs have not become more similar over the past 10 years. Although differences in college major and types of first jobs explain most of the gender gap in starting salaries of college graduates, small but unexplained gender pay differences reveal themselves in the NACE statistics.

Keywords: Gender pay gap; college graduates; college major; discrimination; J16; J31; J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:rleczz:s0147-912120150000042006

DOI: 10.1108/S0147-912120150000042006

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