This paper compares the gender gap in the pay of British, full-time workers from two cohorts, born in 1946 and 1958 and observed in their early thirties in 1978 and 1991 respectively. These dates are separated by 13 years of Equal Pay Legislation coupled with active labor market deregulation. Although women's human capital endowments had improved on average more than men's, there may have been little improvement in the differential treatment of the average woman in full-time employment. When the whole distribution of female earnings was considered, a general improvement in the treatment of women became apparent.

Gerald Makepeace is a professor of economics at the Cardiff Business School, University of Wales Cardiff; Pierella Paci is a lecturer in economics at the City University, London, and Honorary Fellow at the Centre for Longitudinal Studies; Heather Joshi is a professor of economics at the Centre for Longitudinal Studies at the Institute of Education in London; Peter Dolton is a professor of economics at the University of Newcastle. The authors are grateful to Professor M. E. J. Wadsworth. for permission to use data from the MRC National Survey of Health and development and to Marie-Louise Newell and colleagues at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine for their work deriving the variables used here. The authors' use of data from the National Child Development Study was facilitated by Peter Shepherd and other colleagues at SSRU, City University, London. The early stages of this research were funded by the U.K. Department of Employment. The authors are grateful for the comments of the referees, and of colleagues at seminars in Loughborough and Newcastle and conferences in Greygnog and Crete. The data used in this article can be obtained from January 2000 to December 2003 from Heather Joshi, Centre, for Longitudinal Studies, Institute of Education, 20 Bedford Way, London WC1H OAL. The release of the MRC data is subject to consultation with the data owners.