How the 1963 Equal Pay Act and 1964 Civil Rights Act Shaped the Gender Gap in Pay

Martha Bailey, Thomas Helgerman () and Bryan Andrew Stuart ()
Additional contact information
Thomas Helgerman: University of Minnesota
Bryan Andrew Stuart: Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia

No 16700, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: In the 1960s, two landmark statutes—the Equal Pay and Civil Rights Acts—targeted the long-standing practice of employment discrimination against U.S. women. For the next 15 years, the gender gap in median earnings among full-time, full-year workers changed little, leading many scholars to conclude the legislation was ineffectual. This paper revisits this conclusion using two research designs, which leverage (1) cross-state variation in pre-existing state equal pay laws and (2) variation in the 1960 gender gap across occupation-industry-state-group cells to capture differences in the legislation's incidence. Both designs suggest that federal anti-discrimination legislation led to striking gains in women's relative wages, which were concentrated among below-median wage earners. These wage gains offset pre-existing labor-market forces which worked to depress women's relative pay growth, resulting in the apparent stability of the gender gap at the median and mean in the 1960s and 1970s. The data show little evidence of short-term changes in women's employment but suggest that firms reduced their hiring and promotion of women in the medium to long term. The historical record points to the key role of the Equal Pay Act in driving these changes.

Keywords: Equal Pay Act; Civil Rights Act; gender gap (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J16 J71 N32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 104 pages
Date: 2023-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gen, nep-his and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published - ublished online in: Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2024, 139 (3), 1827–1878,

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Related works:
Journal Article: How the 1963 Equal Pay Act and 1964 Civil Rights Act Shaped the Gender Gap in Pay* (2024)
Working Paper: How the 1963 Equal Pay Act and 1964 Civil Rights Act Shaped the Gender Gap in Pay (2023)
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