Date of Award

2012

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Coe, Richard

Keywords

Care Labor, Economics, Labor Economics, Econometrics, Wage Regression, National Longitudal Survey

Area of Concentration

Economics

Abstract

The growth in the supply of care laborers, a predominantly female field, is stagnating at a time when there is a predicted increase in the demand for care labor. This gap in care will continue to widen unless care work is rewarded more fairly in the market. The goal of this thesis is to examine explanations for a care penalty in wages, and test empirically for factors which might exacerbate a wage penalty for participating in care work, including sex, race, marital status, education and experience. Samples from the years 1979, 1988, 1998 and 2008 were gathered from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1979 and tests were performed with Statistical Analysis Software. A number of independent variables, those historically used to predict wages, were studied and their effect on the wages of care workers were tested and analyzed. The results supported the hypothesis. A wage penalty for participating in care labor was found to be statistically significant, even with controls for race, gender, education and experience. This is attributed to a cultural devaluation of caring activities due to their association with altruism and mothering.

Rights

This bibliographic record is available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. The New College of Florida, as creator of this bibliographic record, has waived all rights to it worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.

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