Donna S. Rothstein

The Impact of Family Structure Transitions on Youth Achievement: Evidence From the Children of the NLSY79

We investigated the sensitivity of measures of cognitive ability and socioemotional development to changes in parents’ marital status using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979. We used several scores for each assessment, taken at different times relative to parents’ marital transitions, which allowed us to trace the effects starting up to five years before a parent’s change in marital status and continuing for up to six years afterward. It also allowed us to correct for the unobserved heterogeneity of the transition and nontransition samples by controlling for the child’s fixed effect in estimating the time path of his or her response to the transition. We found that children from families with both biological parents scored significantly better on the BPI and the PIAT-math and PIAT-reading assessments than did children from nonintact families. However, much of the difference disappeared when we controlled for background variables. Furthermore, when we controlled for child fixed effects, we did not find significant longitudinal variation in these scores over long periods that encompass the marital transition. This finding suggests that most of the variation is due to cross-sectional differences and is not a result of marital transitions per se.

The Impact of Worker and Establishment-Level Characteristics on Male-Female Wage Differentials: Evidence from Danish Matched Employee-Employer Data

This paper examines how the segregation of women into certain occupations, industries, establishments, and job cells impacts the gender wage differential of full-time, private sector workers in Denmark. We use matched employer and employee data that contain labor market information for the Danish population. This enables us to document, for the first time, the wage impacts of gender segregation at the level of establishment and job cell in Denmark. We estimate the wage effects of gender segregation at the above four levels through fixed effects or through controls for the proportion of females within the four structures. We find that occupation has a much larger role than industri or establishment in accounting for the gender gap in full-time private sector wages in Denmark. In addition, men and women earn different wages within job cells.

Equal pay in Europe? : closing the gender wage gap

Preface - Acknowledgements - Payment Systems and Gender Pay Differentials: Some Societal Effects - PART ONE: EQUAL PAY IN GERMANY - Case-Study of a German Hospital - Gender-Specific Pay Differentials in Banking: Case-Study of A-Bank in Germany - The Chemical Industry in Germany: A Case-Study of the S Company - PART TWO: EQUAL PAY IN ITALY - Health Services - Telecommunications - Banking - PART THREE: EQUAL PAY IN THE UNITED KINGDOM - Payment Systems and Gender in the United Kingdom: Case-Study of a Chemical Company - Womens Pay in Banking in the United Kingdom: Case-Study of XYZ Bank - The Health Sector in the United Kingdom: A Case-Study - Index

Supervisory Status and Upper-Level Supervisory Responsibilities: Evidence from the NLSY79

This paper examines what it means to be a supervisor, in terms of the associated responsibilities—their nature, who is likely to have them, and how they affect wages. The author examines data from a new series of questions on aspects of supervision included in the 1996 wave of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979. The results indicate that the wage returns to being a supervisor are not associated with simply having supervisory “status” or a supervisory title, per se, but rather with having associated upper-level supervisory responsibilities. Women were less likely than men to attain supervisory status, and once they did so they were slightly less likely to have higher-level supervisory responsibilities.

Unequal Pay for Women and Men: Evidence from the British Birth Cohort Studies

For most of recorded history, mens pay has tended to be higher than womens. In Unequal Pay for Women and Men, Heather Joshi and Pierella Paci look at why gender pay inequality matters. They argue that no amount of training, maternity and parental leave, or child care provisions will change womens economic status if pay treatment remains unequal--if the market values mens time more than womens. The book is the result of an extensive study of the relative wages of British men and women between 1978 and 1991. Using two large and extremely detailed longitudinal data sets, one of women and men born in 1946, and the other of women and men born in 1958, the authors examine the evolution of the pay gap over time and evaluate the success of policies designed to establish equal pay. Although the book focuses mainly on Britain, the results are of interest to labor economists in other countries, as well as to researchers in other fields studying the changing role of women in the labor force.