The Gender Wage Gap Over Time: How Age Affects Wage for Both Sexes

Date of Award

2009

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Coe, Richard

Keywords

Gender, Wage, Econometrics

Area of Concentration

Economics

Abstract

Despite an improvement of gender wage disparity in recent years, a divergence in pay still exists between male and female workers. The goal of this thesis is to find whether the gender wage gap increases as male and female workers age. Theoretical models regarding wage determination were examined; the relevant literature was reviewed. Empirical testing of the hypothesis was performed on separate male and female samples of full-time workers derived from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) for the years 1994 and 2005. Linear regressions were run in SAS on the sample as a whole and then broken down by age cohorts. The results lent support to the hypothesis. Age had a stronger effect on annual earnings for males than females. The gender wage gap showed a substantial increase when moving from the "25-34" age cohort to the "35-44" age cohort. The regression results indicated that when moving between these cohorts the return from education and experience increased more for males than females. In addition, the results indicated that being married had in general an increasingly negative impact on female earnings as they aged but an increasingly positive impact on male earnings.

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