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The Return to Hours Worked Within and Across Occupations: Implications for the Gender Wage Gap

Author

Listed:
  • Jeffrey T. Denning
  • Brian Jacob
  • Lars Lefgren
  • Christian vom Lehn

Abstract

We document two empirical phenomena. First, the observational wage returns to hours worked within occupation is small, and even negative in some specifications. Second, the wage return to average hours worked across occupations is large. We develop a conceptual framework that reconciles these facts, where the key insight is that workers choose jobs as a bundle of compensation and expected hours worked. As an example, we apply this framework to the gender wage gap and show how it can explain the view expressed in recent work that hours differences between men and women represent a large and growing component of the gender wage gap.

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  • Jeffrey T. Denning & Brian Jacob & Lars Lefgren & Christian vom Lehn, 2019. "The Return to Hours Worked Within and Across Occupations: Implications for the Gender Wage Gap," NBER Working Papers 25739, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:25739
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    Cited by:

    1. German Cubas & Chinhui Juhn & Pedro Silos, 2023. "Coordinated Work Schedules and the Gender Wage Gap," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 133(651), pages 1036-1066.
    2. Alexander Bick & Adam Blandin & Richard Rogerson, 2022. "Hours and Wages," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 137(3), pages 1901-1962.
    3. Kevin L. McKinney & John M. Abowd & Hubert P. Janicki, 2022. "U.S. long‐term earnings outcomes by sex, race, ethnicity, and place of birth," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 13(4), pages 1879-1945, November.
    4. Contensou, François & Vranceanu, Radu, 2019. "Working time and wage rate differences : a contract theory approach," ESSEC Working Papers WP1913, ESSEC Research Center, ESSEC Business School, revised 06 Mar 2021.
    5. Del Rey, Elena & Naval, Joaquín & Silva, José I., 2022. "Hours and wages: A bargaining approach," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 217(C).
    6. Contensou, François & Vranceanu, Radu, 2021. "Working time and wage rate differences: Revisiting the role of preferences and labor scarcity," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(2), pages 164-175.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J3 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs
    • J7 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination

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