Occupational Achievements of Same‐Sex Couples in the United States by Gender and Race

This article offers a framework that allows for the simultaneous comparison of all sexual orientation–gender–race/ethnicity groups after controlling for characteristics. The analysis suggests that occupations matter in explaining earnings differences among groups. The article also displays the high magnitude of the gender wage gap in an intersectional framework. The sexual orientation wage premium of lesbians is quite small for blacks and much higher for Hispanics and Asians than for whites. For men, departing from the white heterosexual model involves a substantial punishment; the racial penalty is larger for heterosexuals whereas the sexual orientation penalty is greater for whites.     

Who’s Displaced First? The Role of Race in Layoff Decisions

We test empirically the proposition that race significantly affects an employee's layoff chances. Using data from a financial firm (N = 8918), we find that whites are less likely to be laid off than nonwhites and that, among nonwhites, Asians are less likely to be laid off than blacks or Hispanics. These findings are statistically significant after controlling for structural factors (business unit, occupation, and job level) and individual characteristics (tenure and performance rating). A similar pattern of racial differences exists in other employment practices more actively monitored by the firm, including promotions, pay raises, and performance ratings. Yet these differences are smaller than those in layoffs and are significant for blacks only, not for Hispanics. Our findings suggest that monitoring personnel decisions can reduce racial inequality. Furthermore, our findings highlight that racial differences in employment outcomes vary among minority groups.     

Privatization, City Residency, and Black-White Earnings Differentials: Evidence from the Public Transit Sector

Becker's theory on the economics of discrimination suggests that enhanced competition creates a business environment that discourages employers from paying racial earnings differences. This study tests this hypothesis by examining black-white earnings differentials for public transit bus drivers for pre- and post-privatization periods. The findings reveal an erosion of the racial earnings differential in the post-privatization period which is consistent with the Becker hypothesis. Public transit black union drivers earned more than their white counterparts prior to privatization. City residency accounts for 36 percent of this premium. However, the city-residency earnings advantage and the black-white union premium declinedappreciably in the post-privatization period.     

Earnings behavior in food and tobacco manufacturing

This paper examines and empirically evaluales various relationships between product and labor market characteristics and industrial earnings and productivity behavior in the food and tobacco manufacturing sector. Both higher earnings and larger increases in those earnings over time are observed for more concentrated product classes; further, these classes show no appreciably larger productivity increase over time. Other significant factors in earnings and earnings change determination appear to be plant size distribution, industrial geographic dispersion, and industrial percentage of male employees.     

Effects of Skill and Attitudes on Employee Performance and Earnings

This study uses original survey and archival data from factory and office employees in one firm to relate differences among individual employees' performance to differences in their skill and attitudes about work, and to test the association between employees' earnings and their performance, skill, and attitudes. We suggest that the way in which skill and attitudes affect performance will depend on the type of work that is done. The main results show that among factory employees, those who have on-the-job training and longer experience receive better performance ratings than those without training and with less experience. Factory employees' earnings depend on their performance, following the human capital model of wage determination. Among office workers, training and experience do not significantly affect performance ratings; instead, higher-rated employees have more positive attitudes about work. Office employees' earnings depend on their classroom training, experience, and attitudes, but not on their rated performance.     

The NBA, Exit Discrimination, and Career Earnings

The purpose of this article is threefold. First, it complements the many wage discrimination studies by examining exit discrimination in the NBA using a decade's worth of data (the 1980s). White players have a 36 percent lower risk of being cut than black players, ceteris paribus , translating into an expected career length of 7.5 seasons for an apparently similar player who is white and 5.5 seasons for the same player who is black. Second, the career earnings effect of exit discrimination in the 1980s is larger ($808,000) than the career earnings effect of wage discrimination ($329,000). Third, our data are consistent with the hypothesis that customer racial discrimination is the reason for the observed exit discrimination.     

Earnings Inequality and Unions in Canada

This paper reports research examining differences in the earnings distributions of unionized and non–unionized workers and the impact of union status on the likelihood of a worker being in each region of the earnings distribution. Average earnings of unionized workers are shown to be higher than those of non–union workers in the first four quintiles, but lower than average earnings of non–unionized workers in the top quintile. Union effects are greatest among workers situated in the lower and middle regions of the distribution, and benefit workers who are typically disadvantaged in the labour market.     

Team Racial Composition, Member Attitudes, and Performance: A Field Study

Attitudinal, performance, and demographic data from 1200 workers on self-directed teams are examined to determine if racial composition affects team performance, if African-Americans and whites have different attitudes toward their teams and team performance, and whether any differences explain performance differences associated with different racial composition. Results indicate that racial composition affects team performance and racial differences in team and performance-related attitudes. Differences in attitudes reduce, but do not eliminate, racial composition effects on team performance.     

Labor Market Conditions and the Economic Status of Black Men: A Note

I study the effects of local employment to population ratios on the relative position of blacks to evaluate whether tight labor markets reduce the differences in economic status between young blacks and whites. I find evidence that blacks receive greater employment advantages than whites in tight labor markets, but the effect is small. Blacks with 12 or fewer years of education experience higher earnings in tight labor markets, but this effect is also small.     

Race and Gender Differences in the Earnings of Black Workers

In addition to facing earnings penalties because of their race and additional penalties because of their gender, black women appear to suffer a small but additional penalty because of the intersection of their race and gender. Black women have larger gender than race penalties. Although black men have greater racial penalties than do black women, black women experience larger earnings losses because in addition to racial penalties they face gender and race–gender interaction penalties.     

Non-farm income,gender, and inequality: evidence from rural Ghana and Uganda

This paper examines how the distribution of earnings in rural Ghana and Uganda differs by income type and by gender. We find that non-farm earnings contribute to rising inequality, but that lower income groups also benefit due to strong overall growth in non-farm earnings. The inequality-inducing effect is driven by self-employment income; wage income, on the other hand, reduces inequality. The tendency of non-farm income to contribute to inequality is greater among female-headed households for whom self-employment is important and non-farm opportunities more constrained. Determinants of non-farm income are estimated and appear to be strongly related to location, education, age, and distance to market. Estimates of the linkages to agriculture in Ghana are weaker than expected, showing the non-farm sector to be functioning more as an alternative activity to agriculture than as a complement.     

Discrimination at the Top: American-Born Asian and White Men

Asians are perceived as doing very well, and, indeed, the average earnings of several Asian groups exceed those of whites. However, although entering well-paying positions, Asians may be prevented from further advancement by an invisible "glass ceiling." Using microdata from the 1980 census to examine the economic status of American-born men in five Asian groups, we find that the average Asian man earns as much as non-Hispanic white men, but, adjusting for occupation and industry, highly educated Asian men in all five groups earn less than their white counterparts.     

Earnings Losses of Injured Men: Reported and Unreported Injuries

This paper revisits the earnings losses following a workplace injury, accounting for injured workers who did not apply for workers' compensation and a comparison group of uninjured workers. Selection of the injured group and the comparison group is important. Excluding those who do not apply for benefits overstates the earnings losses, while using less severely injured workers as a comparison group underestimates the earnings losses. Additionally, differentiating whether the injury resulted in a work-limiting disability highlights that it is not the injury event, but rather the subsequent disabilities that drive the earnings losses.     

Mobility, Residential Location and the American Dream: The Intrametropolitan Geography of Minority Homeownership

This article applies data from Washington, DC, Chicago and Los Angeles to estimate three-level nested multinomial logit models of household mobility, residential location and homeownership tenure choice. Model simulation indicates that shocks to income can significantly elevate the homeownership attainment of minority households; however, their urban settlement and homeownership patterns remain substantially more concentrated than those of whites. Simulated equilibration of black economic status with that of whites results in an approximate doubling of homeownership rates among black movers to central city areas. In contrast, homeownership rates among black movers to suburban and outlying areas lag far behind those of whites.     

Do Sectoral Employment Programs Work? New Evidence from New York City's Sector‐Focused Career Centers

While sectoral employment is growing as an approach to providing job opportunities to disadvantaged jobseekers, there is little evidence on the effectiveness of these programs. This study estimates impacts on employment and earnings of three large sectoral employment programs in New York City using a quasi‐experimental design and administrative data on earnings. Participants realized increased employment levels and earnings gains. In addition, participants who received industry‐specific training had greater earnings gains than those who did not.     

Language in the Public Service

In the Canadian public sector, legislation regulates the language of work and service to the public, generating a demand for bilingualism. We examine whether the bilingualism premium is higher in the public than in the private sector. We analyze how earnings from three census years, one before the legislation was strengthened, have evolved, we net out the effects of observables on earnings and we partially address the selection issue.     

Technology policy for the knowledge economy: Public support to young ICT service firms

Public intervention in high-tech sectors is often advocated to resolve market imperfections that may possibly limit the viability of young high-tech enterprises. Although some European countries have adopted national government support policies that explicitly target this type of firm, in Italy and in other EU countries, there are no national support measures specifically designed for them. The paper focuses on the information and communication technologies (ICT) services sector in Italy. It aims to investigate whether both horizontal general-purpose direct support mechanisms at the national level and financial support measures provided by local administrative entities (which rarely have been specific to the ICT sector) permit an efficient allocation of public funds.     

Effect of Comparable Worth Policies on Earnings

The initial impact of comparable worth legislation on male and female earnings is estimated using five public sector comparable worth studies. We find that women would earn an average 17 per cent more if a comparable worth policy were implemented and men would earn an average 1 per cent more. In addition, about half of the earnings gap between women and men in the sample jurisdictions would be eliminated. We also discuss the limitations of previous analyses by examining Aldrich and Buchele's recent empirical work.     

The Relative Effects of Unionism on the Earnings Distributions of Women and Men

This study examines the differential effects of union density on the degree of earnings inequality among women and among men. Our results suggest an equalizing impact of union density for all men and for both men and women who work year-round and full time. Union density does not appear to equalize and may even contribute to a disequalization of the earnings distribution for all women.     

The Growing Importance of Family: Evidence from Brothers’ Earnings

We examine between‐brother correlation of earnings, family income, and wages from two cohorts of the National Longitudinal Surveys. Young brothers who entered the labor market in the 1970s had lower correlations of economic outcomes than did those who entered in the 1980s and early 1990s. Neither the rising brother correlation in education nor the rising return to schooling accounts for much of the increase in the brother correlation in earnings. These results suggest that family and community influences other than years of education that are shared by brothers have become increasingly important in determining economic outcomes.