1996/01/01 by Deborah Anderson, Deborah J. Anderson, David Shapiro · 58 citations
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Health Professions · Social Sciences · #Demographic economics #Economic growth #Economics #Employment and Welfare Studies #Ethnic group #Gender studies #Human capital #Labor Movements and Unions #Labor market dynamics and wage inequality #Labour economics #National Longitudinal Surveys #Political science #Race (biology) #Racial differences #Sociology #Wage #White (mutation)
paper · doi:10.1177/001979399604900206
published in Industrial and Labor Relations Review 49(2), 273-286 (SAGE Publishing)
openalex publication_date 1996/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/25
The authors examine the role that racial differences in access to high-paying occupations played in determining the racial wage gap in the 1980s. Analyzing data on black and white women aged 34–44 from the National Longitudinal Surveys for 1968–88, they estimate the effects of human capital characteristics and discrimination on segregation into high- and low-wage jobs by race. They find that differences in workers' measured characteristics explain little of either the observed occupational segregation by race or the racial wage gap in 1988. Further analysis suggests that several changes in the wage structure for women during the 1980s, notably a widening of occupational wage differentials and an increase in the returns to education, abetted direct discrimination in enlarging the racial wage gap among women.