Wages of power and wages of care: a source of increasing earnings inequality?

Grant description:

There is growing evidence that wage differences between industries and firms are a primary source of contemporary wage inequality. Similarly, evidence suggests that gender segregation at the industry, occupation, and firm levels has persisted even as gender differences in human capital have declined. This project will draw a connection between the contribution of between-industry wage differences to overall wage inequality on the one hand, and occupational/industrial gender segregation and the wage penalty for care work on the other. The researchers will compare employment and wages, by gender, in the care versus financial sectors, thereby capturing the dynamics of gender by occupation in sectors that are the bookends in the structure of wages and wage inequality, tracking the extent to which the gender gap has grown or subsided in these two extreme groups.