How the Human Capital Model Explains Why the Gender Wage Gap Narrowed

Solomon Polachek

No 1102, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper explores secular changes in women’s pay relative to men’s pay. It shows how the human capital model predicts a smaller gender wage gap as male-female lifetime work expectations become more similar. The model explains why relative female wages rose almost unabated from 1890 to the early-1990s in the United States (with the exception of about 1940-1980), and why this relative wage growth tapered off since 1993. In addition to the US, the paper presents evidence from nine other countries using data gleaned from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS).

Keywords: human capital; wages; gender; secular trends (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J1 J2 J3 J7 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 46 pages
Date: 2004-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab and nep-ltv
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (31)

Published - published in: F. Blau, M. Brinton, and D. Grusky, (eds.) The Declining Significance of Gender?, New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2006

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp1102.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: How the Human Capital Model Explains Why the Gender Wage Gap Narrowed (2003)
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:iza:izadps:dp1102

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().