Gender pay gaps in earnings are well-documented in the literature. However, new factors contributing to women's lower earnings have emerged and remain under-researched. Educational choices are among them. We use a rich administrative dataset from Poland, a Central Eastern European country with high tertiary education enrolment and high female…

This report examines the impact of the changing landscape for job skills on gender disparities in the U.S. labor market. The analysis is based on job skills and preparation data from the U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Information Network (O*NET), specifically Version 23, released August 2018, and Version 5.1, released November 2003. O*NET…

Occupational segregation and structural labor market discrimination contribute to significant socioeconomic disparities afflicting Latinas; these inequalities were exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. In April 2020, approximately one in five Latinas were unemployed, registering the highest unemployment rate among all workers. Overall, the Latino…

Careers in the construction trades can provide high earnings and good benefits, often through a learn-while-you-earn apprenticeship. In 2020, more than 300,000 women worked in the trades--the largest number ever. Yet while their numbers are growing, women still make up fewer than one in twenty of workers in construction occupations. This report…

In the last decades, developed economies have witnessed significant declines in wages for low-skill workers, increases in employment in high-skill occupations, rapid diffusion of new technology, and expanding offshoring opportunities. Labor markets in developed countries have reallocated labor from manual to cognitive jobs and from routine to…

Economic theories predict that women are more likely to exit the labor force if their partners' earnings are higher and if their own wage rate is lower. In this article, I use the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (N = 2,254) and discrete-time event-history analysis to show that wives' relative wages are more predictive of their exit than are…

This is an update to the report "Deeper in Debt: Women and Student Loans." Americans today carry $1.54 trillion in student loan debt. That number has more than doubled over the last decade--increasing at nearly six times the rate of inflation. Women are particularly burdened, holding nearly two-thirds of all outstanding loans--around…

This paper attempts to explore the connections between expanding female education and the participation of women in paid employment in Japan, China and India, three of Asia's largest economies. Analysis based on existing data and literature shows that despite the large expansion in educational access in these countries in the last half century,…

Over the course of the past few decades student loans have become an increasingly common means of paying for a college education. Most students who complete a college program now take on student loans, and the amount of student debt that students assume has increased along with the price of attending college. At this time about 44 million…

The literature on higher education in the United States has maintained a place for the specific topic of discrimination against women in the American academy. Institutional restrictions, invisible ceilings, hidden hierarchies--all of these have entered into the discussion surrounding both the failure of women to progress through the academic ranks…

Considered the historic answers to the question of what determines relative wages and wage discrimination. (Author/RK)

Analyzes the situation of women workers in Czechoslovakia in terms of working conditions, difference in earnings compared to men, and attitudes toward work. Future developments, including massive unemployment of women, are outlined. (SK)

In the last 20 years, an increase in the number of working women has been accompanied by changes in the female labor force and in the concentration of women in particular occupations and industries. These changes have a profound effect upon women's earnings. The Current Population Survey (CPS) shows a wide disparity in the median earnings of women…

The typical working woman is thought to make 60% of a man's wage, despite increased job skills. Facts prove this perception incorrect. Lack of progress is an artifact of changing labor market characteristics associated with the rapid growth in the numbers of women in the labor market. Low skills, low wage female entrants tend to hold down the…