« HIV Discrimination | Main | Aid From Above » Wage Gap14 May 2008 03:25 pm
Kay Steiger blogs about this EPI chart showing the substantial gap in wages for male and female recent college graduates. The good news, though, is that thanks to deteriorating male wages, the gap is narrowing . . . if we just continue our 21st century economic trajectory, college educated man and college educated woman alike can be equal in penury. Comments (50)
I'm genuinely puzzled as to where this is coming from - ie, what industries, regions etc are driving the gap? I've spent my career in high tech on the west coast and have never seen any indication that it's an issue out here, so I'm wondering if it's concentrated in more traditional industries or something. Also, what's the sourcing for these numbers - are they employer or employee survey based or what? 
BFR, I don't think the differences are within industries. I think the industries that hire more men (tech, say) pay better than the ones that hire more women (like teaching). This effect is stronger among the non-college-educated, because men have a lot of options for well-paying, dangerous jobs (fishing boats, offshore oil rigs, etc) while women mostly take safer, lower-paying jobs (think hairdresser). Anyway, this chart is a good example of the danger of looking at "inequality" in and of itself as a problem. Obviously, things were better in 2001 for both men and women, but if you only measure the equality, it would look like things have improved for women.
That is obviously the problem here.
Based solely on an attempted recollection of years of college stats, I'll guess that after a jump in the '80's (my day), women are again tending to avoid the 'hard-science', engineering, comp sci, and law degrees. Ergo, the discrepancy. Meanwhile, the men are getting the shaft due to outsourcing, off-shoring, post-tech bubble, and all the various other pressures pushing Americans out of the more value-added professions.
I worner if this is due college grads not finding "real" jobs as easily when they first graduate. The stereotypical BA working at Starbucks.
Do they ever do these things normalized for industry? Full disclosure - my wife makes tons more than I do (in the same industry) and has for years. I understand glass ceilings and all that, but at the new hire level, I'm just genuinely puzzled as to how you could end up with statistically significant differences.
Is this due to college grads having a harder time finding "real" jobs right after they graduate? The stereotypical BA woking at Starbucks?
Ugh, female recent college grad here... making only 15/hr. Female-dominated field? check. Regionally-terrible wages? check.
It's important to not discount individual choice when looking at numbers like this. I know there are plenty of people out there who will peg me as a male chauvinist apologist for the patriarchy for saying this (please don't tell anyone at Feministing, OK?) but men and women chose different kinds of jobs (or sometimes decide not to work) for all kinds of rational and reasonable reasons. As The Trees implies, you'll never get equality of result in numbers like this. More women become teachers. More men become bankers. The important thing to compare is earnings of men and women in comparable careers, and also to compare advancement of men and women with comparable qualifications within their careers. Charts like the one MY posts above that show aggregate numbers are very misleading.
What makes these declining wages even more awesome is that education costs are rising at rates of 6% or more per year. Combined with 2 wars, I don't think there is a better possible time to be young!
Always an interesting topic. Too many steves has it mostly right, but there's more to it. There's a book on this called "Why Men Earn More," by Warren Farrell. The crux of the argument, in addition to the difference in fields, is that the choices men and women make at work are different. Men are more likely to work more hours, move around more, and take less time off work. This earns them more money. Much of it seems to come down to men being more often the main bread-winner and needing to make these choices. Women are more likely to value quality of life, take fewer aggressive steps to get raises, travel less, etc. An important point is that when women with no kids are compared to men with no kids, women earn 114% of what men earn. I'm not saying there's zero sex discrimination, but most of the evidence points toward men being more likely to have to support families and taking on more responsibilities, therefore getting paid more.
Rob Mac and BFR are being entirely too sensisble. There oughta be a law!
I wish the upper-class white people would pay more attention to the fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans never even get to afford college. But hey, who gives a fuck about them when some over-privileged white girl isn't getting what she rightfully deserves!
I would imagine what you're looking at there is me and my brother...both graduated from college the same year, he with a degree in Mechanical Engineering (he loves cars and wants to make money) and me with a degree in Political Science (I thought it was interesting and wasn't especially concerned with practicality). We both have good jobs now, but he makes more than me and probably always will. I could have become an engineer (I graduated high school with better grades in calculus and physics than he did), I just chose not to.
Seems meaningless when aggregated this way. Aren't there comparisons by industry/occupation?
Soullite, that's not true at all. The first thing I found via Google was a USA Today story from back in 02, so it's out of date, but I doubt the figures have changed much. It says, "63% of high school graduates go to college immediately after graduation." Now, not everybody graduates high school, so the percentage of the overall population is lower, but I think it's fair to classify high school grads as the target market for college. Link is here: http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2002-06-05-education-census.htm No, I don't know how to embed a link or do any other html. No, I don't care to find out.
Oh EPI, why can't you start your y-axis at zero? Starting at $17 makes it look like men are getting paid four times as much, as opposed to one-sixth as much more.
What Kerry, Zarco, Rob Mac and BFR said. I think part of the reason there is the trend in college graduates making less is that there are more college graduates as a percentage of the population. There aren't exactly a ton of new high paying jobs that were limited to college graduates being created at the same rate, so more people are going into lower level jobs that don't necessarily require a degree and bring the numbers down.
Kerry, at the same time, your brother might get laid off, outsourced, or hit a salary ceiling, all of which could help your incomes converge.
It's true, of course, that some of this is self-selection, but chalking it all up to that is kind of a facile cop-out. One: there really is a structural problem where men are guided to one sector and women to another for little discernable reason except that's the way it's always been. There may well be some natural difference in choice, but there's also an enormous role being played by social push. Two, and related: broadly speaking, power protects itself, so higher wage jobs protect higher wage jobs. Since they're already staffed more by men than by women, there's a real inertial impediment to greater equality. Yes, comparing within a job is probably the easier problem to address since each firm's salaries are readily available to Congressional subpoena, but comparing across all jobs and fields might be a better way to examine (if not necessarily correct) the broader social structures that contribute to gender inequality in the first place. cmholm, I can't say for every job, but it is definitely not true that women are opting for law school at a lower rate than they did in the 1980s. They're now a sizable majority (largely, I think, because the money-making undergrad fields are male-dominated, and this is their best way to more dough).
Unless and until science advances far enough to allow men to conceive and bear childeren, these numbers will never converge and it would be unrealistic to expect them to.
Reality, that's likely why the survey was of recent college graduates. It was likely trying to weed out most of the instances of women whose careers were affected by childbearing, since not THAT many college graduates have children right away.
Penury...The new opiate for the masses.
For many of the reasons stated in the comments, I don't find charts like these particularly interesting, at least not if you're inferring something about discrimination. But I can comment on the results you'd get if you did control for all these other issues. I have in my career done a couple of dozen analyses of wages within individual companies, in many different industries, and the gender wage gap (and racial) basically always exists. Depending on the data the company maintains, one can control for age, experience, tenure, educational attainment, job title (or in a separate analysis, promotions between job titles), performance reviews, married, and pay grade. In my experience, whichever of the above you control for, you will find that women are paid less than men, and the difference is usually statistically significant. But the wage gap I see is more on the order of 5%.
Crap, are those really average hourly wages for college graduates???? I've practically got my masters and I'm only making a little under $12/hr. I guess I am seriously underpaid even for a woman.
Crap, are those really average hourly wages for college graduates???? I've practically got my masters and I'm only making a little under $12/hr. I guess I am seriously underpaid even for a woman.
Just keep electing Republicans and it can be penury for 80 percent of the country or more, college or no college education!
A big part of the reason that the wage gap is so insidious is that people keep excusing its existence ("women go into different industries" "women have babies" "women can't do math" "we should pay more for handmaids, then") without realizing that its very existence means we have a discriminatory system. It's not necessarily anybody's FAULT that we live in a discriminatory society, but exempting yourself (or your role models) from responsibility does nothing to alleviate the discrimination. We need to find the discriminating factors and ameliorate them, not just pass the buck.
Does anyone know of a study that shows the ratio of males to females getting different degrees. To believe the the supply/demand dynamics for a graduate with an english degree is the same as an engineering degree is foolish (to put it politely).
Luke maybe doesn't get the difference between equality of opportunity and result.
I'm sorry. Is there an objective reason that an investment banker (or athlete or movie star for that matter) should earn so much more than a lowly teacher or nurse?
demisod, I hate to break this to you, but there are these things called "supply" and "demand." They have something to do with why an investment banker makes more than a teacher. I'll let you discover the rest on your own, though.
Re demisod's comment "Is there an objective reason that an investment banker ... should earn so much more than a lowly teacher or nurse?"
Some folks above seem to assume that male-heavy fields like tech and programming are not also bastions of sex discrimination in salary. The experience of friends who found themselves discriminated against and ended up with statistics on employers in their areas tells me other ways. A hip startup and an established old-line tech dealer are equally capable of systematically screwing over their female employees.
"I hate to break this to you, but there are these things called "supply" and "demand." They have something to do with why an investment banker makes more than a teacher." Why thank you. I had no idea of these magical concepts. Pray tell, how is demand determined? Oddly enough, I seldom encounter anyone saying we need better investment bankers, though I often hear complaints about the quality of the educational system. Or perhaps I simply misunderstand, and the fury concerning alphabet soups like CDOs is society's roundabout way of lifting their arms to heaven and crying out for better hedge fund managers. But you must excuse me. I'm off to the comic book store to look for Vo1. 1 of the ever-popular Econ 101 series. How much did you have to pay for yours?
While there's definitely an element of good ol' fashioned sexism at play here, as a college student, I'm fairly certain I see far more women studying literature, education, social work, etc. than finance and the like - which is certainly not the worst thing in the world, perhaps just an indication that what we need to do is pay our teachers, social workers, etc. more.
Demisod, Yes, there is a reason an investment banker, or an athlete or actor makes more than a teacher or a nurse. The reason is that our society is sick with greed and bereft of all moral values, as if we needed more proof. The day will come when we have to pay the piper for it, and when that day comes I for one will rejoice. In a just society of course there would be no investment bankers and there would be no debate about what they should be paid. Read what Tolstoy had to say about the "labor" (i.e. usurious profiteering) of the investment bankers of his day.
I'm with demisod. Is the reason that women get paid less the fact that they become teachers? Or is the reason that teachers get paid less the fact that they're mostly women? I'm not up on my occupational history, so I don't exactly know which came first--the women or the low pay. Maybe the magic law of supply and demand will tell me. Does it work just like my magic 8 ball?
Sorry for the smart-assery, demisod, but you did ask why investment bankers make more than teachers. You know, if I had to pick one commenter here whose ideas, if implemented, would result in the worst possible world, Hector would give Steve Sailer a run for his money. Sailer would keep the darkies in their place, certainly, but I doubt he'd hang them in the streets, the way Hector would to people who have jobs that offend his delicate sensibilities. Jesus (so to speak), I almost forgot about the religious fundamentalism and prudery. No, Hector's world would be worse than Sailer's.
Well the 2008 national housing wage is estimated at $17.32. You shouldn't have to go to college to afford your own apartment, but as the chart makes clear, it's a dicey proposition even with a degree.
If you compare the hourly wage of an entry level banker to the hourly wage of an entry level teacher, my guess would be the banker makes less. A starting teacher works, at most, 50 hours a week for 38 weeks. A rookie banker works, at minimum, 75 hours a week for 50 weeks. A banker doesn't make twice as much as a teacher in year 1, the money is in subsequent years. Let's face it, lifestyle is a big part of these decisions as well.
fireball: Just eye-balling the data, I'd say that what we are seeing measured here are Bell Curve differences.
" Pray tell, how is demand determined? Oddly enough, I seldom encounter anyone saying we need better investment bankers, though I often hear complaints about the quality of the educational system. "
Re: A rookie banker works, at minimum, 75 hours a week for 50 weeks. I work for a major investment bank. We do NOT work 76 hours a week (where are you getting that from). We do work more than 40 hours a week, generally around 45-50 hours depending on the owrk load (which these days has been rather light).
Hector, Without investment bankers how would businesses be able to purchase property, plant, and equipment? Only through retained earnings? How would British Airways be able to finance the purchase of new aircraft from Boeing without merchant bankers? I'd really like to know how your world would work.
What makes these declining wages even more awesome is that education costs are rising at rates of 6% or more per year. Obviously time for an excess profits tax on universities - or maybe professors
1. self-selection of industry. although this is somewhat changing. women now outnumber men in law school. of course, that won't help: a. because most lawyers make shit; and b. the percentage of law grads getting decent jobs is declining. 2. men work more overtime. this makes a difference even in exempt jobs due to bonuses and promotions.
Campesino- Professors are in the same boat with the rest of us as far as wages go. The rising price of education is, most often, related to a decrease in state and federal funding. Fewer tax dollars going to higher ed means more tuition dollars going to higher ed. Nathan-I'd like to see the data on men working more overtime.
Comments closed May 28, 2008. |
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Heads in the Sand
Demanding equality of result will always revert to the lowest common denominator.
Posted by The Trees | May 14, 2008 3:41 PM