Sex Segregation in the Workplace Trends, Explanations, Remedies (1984) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
10 Work Experience, Job Segregation, and Wages
10 Work Experience, Job Segregation, and Wages
Pages 171-191
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 171... ...
The most prominent economic explanation linking labor supply patterns and wages is human capital theory.2 Human capital itself is defined as worker skills or qualifications acquired through schooling or on-thejob training. An individual worker's stock of human capital can be increased by the process of investment.
|
From page 172... ...
WORK HISTORY, WAGES, AND JOB SEGREGATION: THEORETICAL MODELS Work Experience and Earnings In the human capital model, investments in on-thejob training are considered to be critical determinants of wages (see Becker, 1975; Ben-Porath, 1967; Mincer, 1974; and Rosen, 1972~. On-thejob training has a cost, since time spent in training is assumed to be time diverted from production, and production presumably determines earnings.
|
From page 173... ...
, one would expect sharply lower wages than those received just prior to the interruption, followed by a period of rapid wage growth during which human capital is restored. Thus, the long-run effects on wages of nonwork time may be considerably smaller than the short-run effects.
|
From page 174... ...
Since depreciated human capital can be restored, it no longer follows that intermittent workers will necessarily defer investments in on-thejob training until all interruptions are over. This decision will depend on the relative sizes of the clepreciation and restoration effects.4 Similarly, the relative sizes of these two effects will also determine the Tong-run wage costs of labor force withdrawals.
|
From page 175... ...
Labor Force Withdrawals and Job Segregation: Human Capital Explanations The 1974 Economic Report of the President speculated that sex differences in patterns of work participation may be the cause of the sex segregation of jobs. This line of reasoning has been extensively developed by ZelIner (1975)
|
From page 176... ...
Occupational immobility and low wage growth are also predicted by any job segregation model that presumes that women are locked into a set of female-dominated jobs that do not provide productivity-enhancing experience. WOMEN'S WORK AND OCCUPATIONAL HISTORIES The human capital models summarized above predict that women's low wages result from a low overall volume of work, intermittent work participation, and part-time work.
|
From page 177... ...
ii About 70 percent of white women workers held female-dominated jobs in 1975. If job segregation was completely rigid, then we would expect to observe that same fraction spending all of their working years in jobs dominated by women.
|
From page 178... ...
jobs and switched out of them. That fraction is 31 percent for white women and 25 percent for black women.
|
From page 179... ...
. These results suggest that wages of married women aged 30 to 44 are more affected by labor force withdrawals than are wages of women in a broader age range.
|
From page 180... ...
If depreciation is quickly repaired, it no longer follows that intermittent workers will defer investments in onthejob training until all interruptions are completed. Thus, the observation that the wages of women grow more slowly in the years following the completion of schooling because of the reduced incentives to invest in human capital may no longer hold.
|
From page 181... ...
The work segment following the most recent interruption cent was entered quadratically to allow for a more rapid growth at first. Results show the estimated rate of wage growth immediately following the last interruption to be a little over 5 percent per year for white women and 8 percent for black women, with the rate of growth declining to zero after about 10 years for both groups, which is close to the maximum observer!
|
From page 182... ...
In general, white women who did not work in 1979 had the same wage increment for additional years of experience as women who did work in 1979 and similar wage loss with time out as did otherwise similar white women who were working in 1979. But one result for black women does conform with human capital predictions.
|
From page 183... ...
Years of full-time en in male dominated jobs Years of part-time e, in male dominated jobs Years of full-time en in female dominated jobs WORK EXPERIENCE, TOB SEGREGATION, AND WAGES 183 TABLE 10-3 Effects of Part-Time Work and Female-Dominated Work on Wage Growth Independent Variable White Black White Black White h* : years out of labor force .023 - .005 .022 - .026 .021 prior to most recent (.029)
|
From page 184... ...
Full-time work floes indeed appear to be associated with significant wage growth, while part-time work does not. When the two measures of en are entered linearly, the wage growth associated with full-time experience is positive and significant for both white and black women, while the wage growth associated with years of part-time work in the most recent spell of employment was insignificant for both groups of workers.
|
From page 185... ...
(1979) , using a broader age range and a more extensive list of work history measures, found that sex differences in work history accounted for between one-third and two-fif;chs of the wage gap between working white men and working women aged 18 to 64 in 1975.
|
From page 186... ...
He calculated this by regressing the difference between 1972 and 1967 wages on home time and other variables expected to affect wages. Unlike most economic studies of wage differentials based on the human capital model, Polachek examines dollar changes in wages rather than percentage changes.
|
From page 187... ...
We used the longitudinal nature of the PSID to develop more direct tests of the following two predictions of the human capital model: 1. Wage growth and depreciation are lower for work experience gathered in "female'?
|
From page 188... ...
We examined whether the sex typing of women's work experience affected the rate of depreciation during labor force withdrawals by interacting the two labor force withdrawal measures (h* and had with a measure of the average percent female in each woman's occupation-industry combination over the 13-year period.
|
From page 189... ...
Finally, women with discontinuous work careers were no more likely to have worked at "female" jobs than were women with more continuous work experience. These results also have implications for models of job segregation other than the human capital model.
|
From page 190... ...
:165-170. 1979 "Work Experience, Labor Force Withdrawals, and Women's Earnings: Empirical Results Using the 1976 Panel Study of Income Dynamics." In Women in the Labor Market, edited by C.B.
|
From page 191... ...
. 1981 "Occupational Self-Selection: A Human Capital Approach to Sex Differences in Occupational Structure." Review of Economics and Statistics 63, 1 (February)
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.