Can professional cultures contribute to wage inequality? Recent literature has demonstrated how widely held cultural biases reproduce ascriptive inequalities in the workforce, but cultural belief systems "within" professions have largely been ignored as mechanisms of intra-profession inequality. I argue that cultural ideologies about professional…

Does the concentration of recent Latino immigrants into "occupational linguistic niches"--occupations with large numbers of other Spanish speakers--restrict their wage growth? On the one hand, it is possible that Latino immigrants who are concentrated in jobs with large numbers of Spanish speakers may have less on-the-job exposure to English,…

To what extent did the increase in wage inequality among men in the United States over the past three decades result from job loss and/or employment instability? We propose a simple method for decomposing the change in wage inequality into components due to upward and downward between-employer mobility and within-employer wage changes using data…

We use panel data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) to estimate the effects of cognitive skills (measured by the Armed Forces Qualification Test) and attitudinal/behavioral traits (a latent factor based on self-reported self-esteem, locus of control, educational aspirations and educational expectations) on career wage…

Does increasing the minimum wage reduce the high school completion rate? Previous research has suffered from (1. narrow time horizons, (2. potentially inadequate measures of states' high school completion rates, and (3. potentially inadequate measures of minimum wage rates. Overcoming each of these limitations, we analyze the impact of changes in…

We assess the impact of the welfare state on cross-national variation in the gender wage gap. Earnings inequality between men and women is conceptualized as resulting from their different locations in the class hierarchy, combined with the severity of wage differentials between and within classes. This decomposition contributes to identifying…

Several recent studies across the social sciences show that the spatial agglomeration of employment in a local labor market benefits both firms and workers in terms of better firm performance and higher wages. Drawing from the organizational ecology perspective, we argue that workers receive higher wages in large industrial clusters and urban…

There are sizeable earnings differentials by gender and race in the U.S. labor market, with women earning less than men and most racial/ethnic minority groups earning less than whites. It has been proposed in the previous literature that the effects of gender and race on earnings are additive, so that minority women suffer the full disadvantage of…

Using unique data on employers' pre-hire preferences, this article examines the effect of sex typing on the gender gap in offered wages and training. Previous studies using post-hire data have not been able to focus directly on the effects of employer behavior, distinct from employee preferences. By analyzing gender-designated job requisitions for…

Using a hazards framework and panel data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1979-2004), we analyze the fertility patterns of a recent cohort of white and black women in the United States. We examine how completed fertility varies by women's education, differentiating between intended and unintended births. We find that the education…

Using previously unreleased data on nearly every authorized work stoppage that occurred between 1984 and 2002, this paper tests whether the positive wage-strike relationship held following the breakdown of the post-war labor-capital accord. Unlike in decades past, these findings indicate a complete decoupling of the wage-strike relationship. Even…

This paper examines the reasons behind a historic shift in the language couching the wage demands of two North American labor movements during the last twenty years of the 19th century--the Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor. We trace how the once dominant imagery of "wage slavery" lost its connection to producerist labor…

Some consequences of net regional mobility for the male labor force aged 30-37 in 1964 are reported. The effect of geographic mobility on earnings is estimated from earnings differences by mobility status, after controlling for age, sex, race, region of employment, education and academic achievement. Differences in earnings levels between the…

Many youth in the United States lack clear occupational aspirations. This uncertainty in achievement ambitions may benefit socio-economic attainment if it signifies "role exploration," characterized by career development, continued education and enduring partnerships. By contrast, uncertainty may diminish attainment if it instead leads…

Analysis of North Carolina survey data indicates that females' average hourly wages were 71% of males', and blacks' wages were 78% of whites'. Human capital factors (educational attainment and occupational experience) explained 31% and 3% of the racial and gender gaps, respectively. Job gender composition explained 56% of the gender gap; job…