New Evidence on Sex Segregation and Sex Differences in Wages from Matched Employee-Employer Data [report]

Kimberly Bayard, Judith Hellerstein, David Neumark, Kenneth Troske
1999 unpublished
We assemble a new matched employer-employee data set covering essentially all industries and occupations across all regions of the U.S. We use this data set to re-examine the question of the relative contributions to the overall sex gap in wages of sex segregation vs. wage differences by sex within occupation, industry, establishment, and occupation-establishment cells. This new data set is especially useful because earlier research on this topic relied on data sets that covered only a narrow
more » ... nge of industries, occupations, or regions. Our results indicate that a sizable fraction of the sex gap in wages is accounted for by the segregation of women into lower-paying occupations, industries, establishments, and occupations within establishments. Nonetheless, a substantial part of the sex gap in wages remains attributable to the individual's sex. This latter finding contrasts sharply with the conclusions of previous research (especially Groshen, 1991) , which indicated that sex segregation accounted for essentially all of the sex wage gap. Further research into the sources of withinestablishment within-occupation sex wage differences is therefore much more important than previously thought.
doi:10.3386/w7003 fatcat:2popnzl4ifdf5lljxqel7ne6k4