IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/indres/v54y2015i4p648-667.html

Pay Secrecy and the Gender Wage Gap in the United States

Author

Listed:
  • Marlene Kim

Abstract

type="main" xml:id="irel12109-abs-0001"> Legislators and advocates claim that pay secrecy perpetuates the gender wage gap and that the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) should be amended to outlaw these practices. Using a difference-in-differences fixed-effects human-capital wage regression, I find that women with higher education levels who live in states that have outlawed pay secrecy have higher earnings, and that the wage gap is consequently reduced. State bans on pay secrecy and federal legislation to amend the FLSA to allow workers to share information about their wages may improve the gender wage gap, especially among women with college or graduate degrees.

Suggested Citation

  • Marlene Kim, 2015. "Pay Secrecy and the Gender Wage Gap in the United States," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54(4), pages 648-667, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:indres:v:54:y:2015:i:4:p:648-667
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/irel.2015.54.issue-4
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stephen Benard & Shelley Correll & In Paik, 2007. "Getting a job: Is there a motherhood penalty?," Natural Field Experiments 00227, The Field Experiments Website.
    2. Danziger, Leif & Katz, Eliakim, 1997. "Wage Secrecy as a Social Convention," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 35(1), pages 59-69, January.
    3. Linus Yamane, 2002. "Native-Born Filipina/o Americans and Labor Market Discrimination," Feminist Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 8(2), pages 125-144.
    4. Carole Green & Marianne Ferber, 2005. "Do Detailed Work Histories Help to Explain Gender and Race/Ethnic Wage Differentials?," Review of Social Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 63(1), pages 55-85.
    5. June O'Neill, 2003. "The Gender Gap in Wages, circa 2000," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(2), pages 309-314, May.
    6. Chay, Kenneth Y. & Lee, David S., 2000. "Changes in relative wages in the 1980s Returns to observed and unobserved skills and black-white wage differentials," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 99(1), pages 1-38, November.
    7. Thomas Lemieux, 2006. "Increasing Residual Wage Inequality: Composition Effects, Noisy Data, or Rising Demand for Skill?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(3), pages 461-498, June.
    8. D. Mar, 2000. "Four decades of Asian American women's earnings: Japanese, Chinese, and Filipino American women's earnings 1960–1990," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 18(2), pages 228-237, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Srikant Devaraj & Pankaj C. Patel, 2022. "State bans on pay secrecy and earnings: Evidence from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 60(4), pages 697-734, December.
    2. John S. Heywood & Nikolaos Theodoropoulos, 2020. "The declining influence of workplace differences on the gender wage gap," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 40(2), pages 1194-1200.
    3. Gamage, Danula K. & Kavetsos, Georgios & Mallick, Sushanta & Sevilla, Almudena, 2020. "Pay Transparency Initiative and Gender Pay Gap: Evidence from Research-Intensive Universities in the UK," IZA Discussion Papers 13635, IZA Network @ LISER.
    4. Danula K. Gamage & Georgios Kavetsos & Sushanta Mallick & Almudena Sevilla, 2024. "Pay transparency intervention and the gender pay gap: Evidence from research‐intensive universities in the UK," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 62(2), pages 293-318, June.
    5. Eleni Yitbarek & Nicky Nicholls & Michelle Pleace, "undated". "Do opinions on fair salaries vary with gender in South Africa?," ERSA Working Paper Series v::y:2025:i::id:220, Economic Research Southern Africa.
    6. Duchini, Emma & Simion, Stefania & Turrell, Arthur, 2020. "Pay Transparency and Cracks in the Glass Ceiling," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1311, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    7. Shang, Longfei & Saffar, Walid, 2024. "Pay transparency and entrepreneurship," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 162(C).
    8. Flynn, James, 2022. "Salary disclosure and individual effort: Evidence from the National Hockey League," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 202(C), pages 471-497.
    9. Patrick Bennett & Ian Burn & Luke Walsh, 2023. "The Effect of Pay Transparency Laws on Wages and Discrimination Complaints," Working Papers 202312, University of Liverpool, Department of Economics.
    10. Shira Buzaglo-Baris, 2023. "Firm Effect and the Israeli Gender Wage Gap," Bank of Israel Working Papers 2023.17, Bank of Israel.
    11. Michael Baker & Yosh Halberstam & Kory Kroft & Alexandre Mas & Derek Messacar, 2023. "Pay Transparency and the Gender Gap," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 15(2), pages 157-183, April.
    12. Burn, Ian & Kettler, Kyle, 2019. "The more you know, the better you’re paid? Evidence from pay secrecy bans for managers," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 92-109.
    13. Ebony McGee & Monica F. Cox & Joyce B. Main & Monica L. Miles & Meseret F. Hailu, 2024. "Wage Disparities in Academia for Engineering Women of Color and the Limitations of Advocacy and Agency," Research in Higher Education, Springer;Association for Institutional Research, vol. 65(5), pages 914-942, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Guido Matías Cortés & Manuel Hidalgo-Pérez, 2015. "Changes in the Return to Skills and the Variance of Unobserved Ability," Working Papers 15.15, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Department of Economics.
    2. Fortin, Nicole & Lemieux, Thomas & Firpo, Sergio, 2011. "Decomposition Methods in Economics," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 1, pages 1-102, Elsevier.
    3. Pedro Carneiro & Sokbae Lee, 2011. "Trends in Quality-Adjusted Skill Premia in the United States, 1960-2000," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(6), pages 2309-2349, October.
    4. Demombynes, Gabriel & Metzler, Johannes, 2008. "Connecting the unobserved dots : a decomposition analysis of changes in earnings inequality in urban Argentina, 1980-2002," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4624, The World Bank.
    5. Belzil, Christian & Leonardi, Marco, 2007. "Can risk aversion explain schooling attainments? Evidence from Italy," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(6), pages 957-970, December.
    6. Marlene Kim, 2013. "Race and ethnicity in the workplace," Chapters, in: Deborah M. Figart & Tonia L. Warnecke (ed.), Handbook of Research on Gender and Economic Life, chapter 14, pages 218-235, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    7. Lance Lochner & Youngki Shin, 2014. "Understanding Earnings Dynamics: Identifying and Estimating the Changing Roles of Unobserved Ability, Permanent and Transitory Shocks," NBER Working Papers 20068, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Francine D. Blau & Lawrence M. Kahn, 2006. "The U.S. Gender Pay Gap in the 1990S: Slowing Convergence," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 60(1), pages 45-66, October.
    9. Patrick Bayer & Kerwin Kofi Charles, 2016. "Divergent Paths: Structural Change, Economic Rank, and the Evolution of Black-White Earnings Differences, 1940-2014," NBER Working Papers 22797, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Xing, Chunbing & Li, Shi, 2012. "Residual wage inequality in urban China, 1995–2007," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 205-222.
    11. Manuel Hidalgo, 2009. "Are Within-Groups `Abilities' Distribution Constant on Time?," Working Papers 09.15, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Department of Economics.
    12. Lance Lochner & Youngmin Park & Youngki Shin, 2017. "The Evolution of Unobserved Skill Returns in the U.S.: A New Approach Using Panel Data," Staff Working Papers 17-61, Bank of Canada.
    13. Joanna Tyrowicz & Lucas van der Velde, 2017. "When the opportunity knocks: large structural shocks and gender wage gaps," GRAPE Working Papers 2, GRAPE Group for Research in Applied Economics.
    14. James Spletzer & Elizabeth Weber Handwerker, 2015. "The Role of Establishments and the Concentration of Occupations in Wage Inequality," Working Papers id:7427, eSocialSciences.
    15. Victor Chernozhukov & Iván Fernández‐Val & Blaise Melly, 2013. "Inference on Counterfactual Distributions," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 81(6), pages 2205-2268, November.
    16. Timmermans, Stefan & Almeling, Rene, 2009. "Objectification, standardization, and commodification in health care: A conceptual readjustment," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 69(1), pages 21-27, July.
    17. Thanos Fragkandreas, 2022. "Three Decades of Research on Innovation and Inequality: Causal Scenarios, Explanatory Factors, and Suggestions," Working Papers 60, Birkbeck Centre for Innovation Management Research, revised Feb 2022.
    18. Héctor Alberto Botello-Penaloza & Isaac Guerrero-Rinc�n, 2019. "Las leyes de licencia de maternidad y el mercado laboral en Colombia," Revista Economía y Región, Universidad Tecnológica de Bolívar, vol. 13(1), pages 67-86.
    19. T. Gries & R. Grundmann & I. Palnau & M. Redlin, 2017. "Innovations, growth and participation in advanced economies - a review of major concepts and findings," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 14(2), pages 293-351, April.
    20. Theodore Koutmeridis, 2013. "The Market for "Rough Diamonds": Information, Finance and Wage Inequality," CDMA Working Paper Series 201307, Centre for Dynamic Macroeconomic Analysis, revised 14 Oct 2013.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:indres:v:54:y:2015:i:4:p:648-667. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0019-8676 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.