A Clear Voice

I found a 1999 study, which was mentioned mentioned in a fact sheet from the National Women's Law Center, called New Evidence On Sex Segregation And Sex Differences In Wages From Matched Employee-Employer Data (which, incidentally, was done right here at MU.)

The study uses data from the 1990 census. (Seeing that the data is 15 years old, we can certainly take the results with a grain of salt.) They control for education, marital status, race, and location. They also attempt to control for experience and maternity choices, although they have to extrapolate a estimate of those effects based on the number of children and age since the census does not ask about those things specifically, so we can not be confident that those things are properly controlled for. Using these controls, they say

Overall, our estimates indicate that from about one-quarter to one-half of the sex wage gap takes the form of wage differences between men and women within narrowly-defined occupations within establishments.

Further, when they restricted their study to women under the median age of 40, they found that not only was there less of a wage gap (.26 versus .38), but that a smaller percentage of that wage gap was due to the individual’s sex (20 and 31%).

Since these are women under the age of 40, they presumably entered the workforce around 1968 and later. Since things that happen early in your career have lasting effects throughout your life, a lot of the women being studied in this case probably had more effects of discrimination and family choices than women entering the workforce today, so we should still take these numbers with a grain of salt.

The two different percentages are due to making comparisons using a different number of occupations. Using 13 occupations gives the 31% figure, whereas using 491 occupations gives the 20% figure. Since these occupations cover a wide range of industries, including manufacturing and non-manufacturing jobs, It would not be hard to understand that using more occupations would probably give a more accurate figure. Even within, for instance, a software company, there are many different delineations that would have an effect on salary.

If we go ahead and use these numbers anyway, despite the possible problems and the fact that they are 15 years old, we find that the amount of wage gap due to solely gender and not to education, experience, gaps in career etc., is about .05, meaning that women make 95 cents on the dollar compared to men. That’s a lot different from the numbers you usually hear. And, as the study says,

We do not attempt in this paper to determine the underlying forces that cause men and women to have different wages within narrowly-defined occupations in the same establishments. Our results simply suggest that there is still research to be done in order to identify these forces. In particular, our results leave open the possibility that within narrowly-defined occupations and establishments, men and women are performing essentially the same job but are not being paid equally–a violation of the Equal Pay Act. Further research into the sources of within-establishment, within-occupation sex wage differences is therefore much more important than previously thought.

Therefore, it’s impossible to tell how much of the estimated 5 cent wage gap is directly attributable to employer discrimination and how much is attributable to other factors, such as, for example, willingness to work overtime when needed. It doesn’t seem to me to be something to get in such a tizzy over that we need to pass a new bill when we already have one to address this problem.

Of course people that fought genuine discrimination tend to be unable to let it go once the problem has been mostly fixed, and politicians are always willing to use that, so I suppose this bill is not too much of a surprise. I don't think it would be too out of line to suggest that Hillary is using this bill to appeal to her base and make up for for things her base don't like, such as the religious discrimination act she has been working on with Kerry and her recent comments on abortion.

Update: This Town Hall column points out that women who have never married or had children make .17 cents more on the dollar than their male counterpoints. He also points out that "any half decent businessman would bend over backward to hire women if they were doing equal work so cheaply." I remain unenthused about the terrible wage gap problem.

Linked at Outside the Beltway