Explaining Utah's gender gap in wages

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Publication Type honors thesis
School or College College of Social & Behavioral Science
Department Economics
Faculty Mentor Cihan Bilginsoy
Creator Miller, Curtis
Title Explaining Utah's gender gap in wages
Year graduated 2015
Date 2015-08
Description Women earn less than men, and the disparity between men's and women's wages in Utah is larger than the same disparity at the national or regional levels. Little is known as to why Utah has a larger wage gap than the nation or its neighbors. In this paper, we use Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition to decompose the wage gap in Utah, the Intermountain region, and the nation into a part that can be attributed to differing endowments between men and women and a part due to men and women being rewarded differently in the labor market, due to factors including discrimination. We compare these differentials across time (from 1992 to 2014) and geographic regions. Using pooled CPS March data from 2009 to 2014, we find that at the national level, women earn 82% of what men earn; among similarly qualified individuals, women earn 97% of what men earn. In Utah, these figures are 74% and 86%, respectively. Utah's earnings gap is larger than the nation's due to both more discrimination and a larger endowment effect for Utah. Furthermore, since 1992, inequality due to discrimination has decreased in Utah, but inequality due to differing endowments has increased, unlike the national trend where both causes decreased.
Type Text
Publisher University of Utah
Subject Women -- Employment -- Utah; Wage differentials -- Utah; Gender gap
Language eng
Rights Management Copyright © Curtis Miller 2015
Format Medium application/pdf
Format Extent 866,063 bytes
Identifier etd3/id/3644
Permissions Reference URL https://collections.lib.utah.edu/ark:/87278/s6w133mc
ARK ark:/87278/s6tx6pps
Setname ir_htoa
ID 197196
Reference URL https://collections.lib.utah.edu/ark:/87278/s6tx6pps
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