Volume 31, Number 3 (Summer) 1996
Dolton, Peter, Donal O'Neill, and Olive Sweetman. 1996. "Gender Differences in the Changing Labor Market: The Role of Legislation and Inequality in Changing the Wage Gap for Qualified Workers in the United Kingdom." Journal of Human Resources 31(3):549-565.
We use detailed cohort data from three surveys of graduates to examine two explanations for the large decline in the male-female wage gap that occurred in the United Kingdom during the early 1970s. The first attributes the fall to gender-specific factors, most notably the introduction of antidiscrimination legislation. The second explanation argues that these changes were largely in response to changes in the wage structure and in particular to the introduction of income policies. Our findings show that for U.K. graduates, all the change in relative wages that occurred in this period can be accounted for by gender-specific forces.
Peter Dolton is a professor of economics at the University of Newcastle, England. Donal O’ Neill and Olive Sweetman are lecturers in the economics department at Maynooth College, Ireland. This work was carried out while O’Neill and Sweetman were at the University of Newcastle. The authors would like to thank participants at the 1994 EMRU Conference in Ambleside and the 1995 RES Conference in Kent, as well as four anonymous referees, for helpful comments and suggestions regarding this paper. Peter Dolton would also like to thank the ESRC for funding from grant number 115 19255006. The data used in this article can be obtained beginning in November 1996 through October 1999 from Olive Sweetman at the following address: Economics Dept., Maynooth College, Maynooth, Co. Kildare, Ireland.
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