Working Paper: NBER ID: w17241
Authors: Francine D. Blau; Lawrence M. Kahn
Abstract: We use Michigan Panel Study of Income Dynamics data and data from a 2008 telephone survey of adults conducted by Westat for the Princeton Data Improvement Initiative (PDII) to explore the importance and feasibility of adding retrospective questions about actual work experience to cross-sectional data sets. We demonstrate that having such actual experience data is important for analyzing women's post-school human capital accumulation, residual wage inequality, and the gender pay gap. Further, our PDII survey results show that it is feasible to collect actual experience data in cross-sectional telephone surveys like the March Current Population Survey annual supplement.
Keywords: gender pay gap; actual experience; cross-sectional data; wage inequality
JEL Codes: C81; J16; J24
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| actual experience data (C81) | analysis of the gender pay gap (J31) |
| lack of actual experience data (C81) | underestimation of women's human capital accumulation (J24) |
| underestimation of women's human capital accumulation (J24) | overstatement of wage gaps (J31) |
| potential experience instead of actual experience (D84) | overstatement of increase in women's residual wage inequality (J79) |
| failure to collect actual work histories (J22) | underestimations of women's on-the-job human capital accumulation (J24) |
| interruptions in work history (J63) | implications for wage inequality and labor market outcomes for women (J70) |