Gender Equity in Labor
Paper Session
Saturday, Jan. 4, 2025 10:15 AM - 12:15 PM (PST)
- Chair: Stephanie Cellini, George Washington University
Demographic Differences in Returns to Early Career Occupations
Abstract
This paper provides the first large-scale U.S. based evidence on how workers' occupations at young ages relate to career progression, and how the importance of initial job characteristics varies by gender and race/ethnicity. While much evidence shows that some groups of workers face significant barriers to workplace success and promotion, and that these barriers vary across occupations, little is known about the role of early occupational sorting on subsequent disparities.We construct a longitudinal database of workers' wages, firm characteristics, and predicted occupations in 23 U.S. states. Currently, the US does not collect longitudinally linked data on workers' occupations, so we use the Longitudinal Employer Household Database (LEHD) and impute workers' occupations based on worker and firm characteristics. We use the sample of the LEHD linked to the American Community Survey - for whom occupations are observed - and train a machine learning algorithm to predict the occupations each worker in the LEHD is most likely to hold - and the probability they are in that occupation. Our predictions indicate that a worker’s actual two-digit occupation code is included in our predicted list of the top 10 most likely occupations for a large share of workers in our validation sample.
These novel data enable us to examine U.S. workers' occupations and wage mobility in the US for the first time on a large scale. First, we examine how wage growth varies based on a worker's initial occupation. Next, we examine how these relationships vary by workers' demographic characteristics, and the extent to which initial occupation choice matters more for women and people from racial/ethnic minority backgrounds than their counterparts. In addition, we examine how the initial occupations associated with the greatest wage growth vary with worker demographics. Finally, we examine how gender and racial/ethnic wage gaps vary across occupations.
Young Women in Cities: Urbanization and Gender-biased Migration
Abstract
Young women outnumber young men in cities in many countries during periods of economic growth and urbanization. This gender imbalance among young urbanites is more pronounced in larger cities. We use the gradual rollout of Special Economic Zones across China as a quasi-experiment to establish the causal impact of urbanization on gender-differential incentives to migrate. We highlight the role of the marriage market in increasing rural women's chance of marrying and marrying up in urban areas during rapid urbanization.Equilibrium Gender Discrimination and Disadvantage in Student Evaluations of Teaching
Abstract
How should gender discrimination and systemic disadvantage be addressed when more discriminatory and less generous students systematically sort into certain fields and courses? In this paper, we estimate measures of gender bias and evaluation generosity at the student level by examining the gap between how a student rates male and female instructors, controlling for professor fixed effects. Accounting for measurement error, we find significant variation in gender bias and generosity across students. Further- more, we uncover that bias varies systematically by gender and field of study and that patterns of sorting are sufficiently large to place female faculty at a substantive disad- vantage in some fields and male faculty at a disadvantage in others. Finally, we docu- ment that sexist attitudes are strongly predictive of gender-based sorting and propose Empirical Bayes inspired measures of student-level bias to correct for instructor-specific advantages and disadvantages caused by sorting.Discussant(s)
Amanda Chuan
,
Michigan State University
Stephanie Cellini
,
George Washington University
Matthew Baird
,
LinkedIn
Christine Mulhern
,
RAND Corporation
JEL Classifications
- J7 - Labor Discrimination
- J1 - Demographic Economics