IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/3445.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Career Plans and Expectations of Young Women and Men: The Earnings Gap and Labor Force Participation

Author

Listed:
  • Francine D. Blau

Abstract

Using detailed information on the career plans and earnings expectations of college business school seniors, we test the hypothesis that women who plan to work intermittently choose jobs with lower rewards to work experience in return for lower penalties for labor force interruptions. We find that while men and women expect similar starting salaries, women anticipate considerably lower earnings in subsequent years, even under the assumption of continuous employment after leaving school. While it is also true that women in the sample plan to work fewer years than men, these differences do not explain the observed gender differences in expected earnings profiles. We also find no evidence that gender differences in expected earnings have any effect on the number of years these women plan to be in the labor market.

Suggested Citation

  • Francine D. Blau, 1990. "Career Plans and Expectations of Young Women and Men: The Earnings Gap and Labor Force Participation," NBER Working Papers 3445, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:3445
    Note: LS
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w3445.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Yoram Weiss & Reuben Gronau, 1981. "Expected Interruptions in Labour Force Participation and Sex-Related Differences in Earnings Growth," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 48(4), pages 607-619.
    2. Mincer, Jacob & Polachek, Solomon, 1974. "Family Investment in Human Capital: Earnings of Women," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(2), pages 76-108, Part II, .
    3. Paula England, 1982. "The Failure of Human Capital Theory to Explain Occupational Sex Segregation," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 17(3), pages 358-370.
    4. Robert L. Anderson & Kathleen P. Anderson, 1988. "A Comparison of Women in Small and Large Companies," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 12(3), pages 23-33, January.
    5. Polachek, Solomon William, 1981. "Occupational Self-Selection: A Human Capital Approach to Sex Differences in Occupational Structure," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 63(1), pages 60-69, February.
    6. Gary S. Becker, 1981. "A Treatise on the Family," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number beck81-1.
    7. Steven H. Sandell & David Shapiro, 1980. "Work Expectations, Human Capital Accumulation, and the Wages of Young Women," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 15(3), pages 335-353.
    8. Polachek, Solomon William, 1975. "Differences in Expected Post-school Investments as a Determinant of Market Wage Differentials," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 16(2), pages 451-470, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Polachek, Solomon W., 2008. "Earnings Over the Life Cycle: The Mincer Earnings Function and Its Applications," Foundations and Trends(R) in Microeconomics, now publishers, vol. 4(3), pages 165-272, April.
    2. Das, Tirthatanmoy & Polachek, Solomon, 2017. "Micro Foundations of Earnings Differences," IZA Discussion Papers 10922, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Bisakha Sen, 2003. "Why do Women feel the way they do about market work: the role of familial, social and economic factors," Review of Social Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 61(2), pages 211-234.
    4. Solomon Polachek, 2003. "Mincer's Overtaking Point and the Life Cycle Earnings Distribution," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 1(4), pages 273-304, December.
    5. Tim Leunig & Maria Stanfors, 2010. "Piece-rates and prosperity: evidence from the late nineteenth-century tobacco industry," Working Papers 10003, Economic History Society.
    6. Solomon W. Polachek & Jun Xiang, 2009. "The Gender Pay Gap across Countries: A Human Capital Approach," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 227, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    7. Inés P. Murillo, 2011. "Human capital obsolescence: some evidence for Spain," International Journal of Manpower, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 32(4), pages 426-445, July.
    8. Sumru Altug & Robert A. Miller, 1990. "Human capital, aggregate shocks, and panel data estimation," Discussion Paper / Institute for Empirical Macroeconomics 47, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    9. Burnette, Joyce & Stanfors, Stanfors, 2018. "Understanding the gender gap among turn-of-the-century Swedish compositors," Working Paper Series 2018:1, IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy.
    10. Molina, José Alberto & Montuenga, Víctor M., 2008. "The Motherhood Wage Penalty in a Mediterranean Country: The Case of Spain," IZA Discussion Papers 3574, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. Christina Boll & Malte Jahn & Andreas Lagemann, 2017. "The gender lifetime earnings gap—exploring gendered pay from the life course perspective," Journal of Income Distribution, Ad libros publications inc., vol. 25(1), pages 1-53, March.
    12. Flyer, Fredrick & Rosen, Sherwin, 1997. "The New Economics of Teachers and Education," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 15(1), pages 104-139, January.
    13. Marta Fana & Davide Villani & Martina Bisello, 2021. "Mind the task: evidence on persistent gender gaps at the workplace," JRC Working Papers on Labour, Education and Technology 2021-03, Joint Research Centre.
    14. repec:eee:labchp:v:1:y:1986:i:c:p:603-640 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Callan, Tim & Wren, Anne, 1994. "Male-Female Wage Differentials: Analysis and Policy Issues," Research Series, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), number GRS163.
    16. Francine D. Blau & Lawrence M. Kahn, 2017. "The Gender Wage Gap: Extent, Trends, and Explanations," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 55(3), pages 789-865, September.
    17. Cavapozzi, Danilo & Francesconi, Marco & Nicoletti, Cheti, 2021. "The impact of gender role norms on mothers’ labor supply," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 186(C), pages 113-134.
    18. Michal Myck & Gillian Paull, 2001. "The role of employment experience in explaining the gender wage gap," IFS Working Papers W01/18, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    19. Jan M. Hoem & Gerda Neyer & Gunnar Andersson, 2006. "Education and childlessness," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 14(15), pages 331-380.
    20. Kunze, Astrid, 2014. "The family gap in career progression," Discussion Paper Series in Economics 29/2014, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Economics.
    21. Boll Christina & Rossen Anja & Wolf André, 2017. "The EU Gender Earnings Gap: Job Segregation and Working Time as Driving Factors," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 237(5), pages 407-452, October.

    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:nbr:nberwo:3445. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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.