They reached school leaving
Posted: Sat Feb 08, 2025 9:14 am
We investigate this pattern in survey data about people born in a week of 1958. age the year before the Equal Pay Act came in. They have been followed to age 55 in 2013. As shown in the figure, the gender wage gap in hourly pay at 23 was 14% of men’s pay, rose to a peak of 33% at age 42 and dropped back to 28% most recently at age 55. The laos rcs data latter ratio is likely to be magnified in unequal pension entitlements. In contrast to the national averages, our survey data can disentangle how far gender differences in education, work experience, and family circumstances can account for this long-term profile. This exercise also identifies any otherwise unexplained unequal treatment of men and women in the labour market.
Differences in the educational attainments of men and women of this generation, though still favouring men, were relatively small, and accounted for only a minor part of the cohort’s pay gaps (see the small gap between the top two lines in the figure). The presence of partners and children in the home played even less of a role in the accounting for the gap (see the even smaller gap between the second and third lines plotted in the figure). It was differences in work experience which accounted for a major part of the pay gap (see the widening area above the bottom line in the figure). The difference was particularly large for experience in full-time jobs. Although the women workers at later ages had substantial part-time experience behind them, it contributed little if anything to their rate of pay, thus it was women’s ‘failure’ to accumulate full-time experience that led to the widening in the gender wage gap after age 33.
Differences in the educational attainments of men and women of this generation, though still favouring men, were relatively small, and accounted for only a minor part of the cohort’s pay gaps (see the small gap between the top two lines in the figure). The presence of partners and children in the home played even less of a role in the accounting for the gap (see the even smaller gap between the second and third lines plotted in the figure). It was differences in work experience which accounted for a major part of the pay gap (see the widening area above the bottom line in the figure). The difference was particularly large for experience in full-time jobs. Although the women workers at later ages had substantial part-time experience behind them, it contributed little if anything to their rate of pay, thus it was women’s ‘failure’ to accumulate full-time experience that led to the widening in the gender wage gap after age 33.