Volume 30, Number 4 (Fall) 1995
Neumark, David, and Michele McLennan. 1995. "Sex Discrimination and Women's Labor Market Outcomes." Journal of Human Resources 30(4):713-740.
The human capital explanation of sex differences in wages is that, owing to specialization in household production, women intend to work in the labor market more intermittently than men, and therefore invest lass, leading to lower wage growth. And alternative "feedback" hypothesis is that women experience labor market discrimination and respond with career interruptions, less investment, and lower wage growth . This paper explores the reliability between self-reported discrimination and subsequent labor market outcomes to test this alternative hypothesis.
Some of the evidence is consistent with feedback hypothesis. Working women who report discrimination are more likely subsequently to change employers, to have children, and marry. However, the evidence is not consistent with the two implications of the feedback hypothesis that most directly challenge the human capital explanation of sex differences in wages; women who report discrimination do not accumulate less experience, nor do they have lower wage growth.
David Neumark is a professor of economics at Michigan State University, and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Michele McLennan is a visiting professor of economics at Bryn Mawr College. Fran Blau, Hank Farber, Andrew Foster, mark Killingsworth, and anonymous referee, and participants in the NBER Labor Studies Program provided helpful comments. The data used in this article can be obtained beginning in June 1996 through June 1999 from Michele McLennan, Department of Economics, Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, PA 19010.
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US ISSN 0022-166X