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Author: Weisshaar, Katherine
Resulting in 2 citations.
1. Weisshaar, Katherine
Cabello-Hutt, Tania
Labor Force Participation Over the Life Course: The Long-Term Effects of Employment Trajectories on Wages and the Gendered Payoff to Employment
Demography published online (29 January 2020): DOI: 10.1007/s13524-019-00845-8.
Also: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13524-019-00845-8
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Population Association of America
Keyword(s): Employment, Intermittent/Precarious; Gender Differences; Labor Force Participation; Life Course; Wage Gap

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

In this article, we consider how individuals' long-term employment trajectories relate to wage inequality and the gender wage gap in the United States. Using more than 30 years of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 sample, we identify six employment trajectories for individuals from ages 22 to 50. We find that women across racial/ethnic groups and Black men are more likely than White and Hispanic men to have nonsteady employment trajectories and lower levels of employment throughout their lives, and individuals who have experienced poverty also have heightened risks of intermittent employment. We then assess how trajectories are associated with wages later in careers, at ages 45-50. We find significant variation in wages across work trajectories, with steady high employment leading to the highest wages. This wage variation is primarily explained by work characteristics rather than family characteristics. Finally, we examine gender variation in within-trajectory wages. We find that the gender wage gap is largest in the steady high employment trajectory and is reduced among trajectories with longer durations of nonemployment. Thus, although women are relatively more concentrated in nonsteady trajectories than are men, men who do follow nonsteady wage trajectories incur smaller wage premiums than men in steady high employment pathways, on average. These findings demonstrate that long-term employment paths are important predictors of economic and gender wage inequality.
Bibliography Citation
Weisshaar, Katherine and Tania Cabello-Hutt. "Labor Force Participation Over the Life Course: The Long-Term Effects of Employment Trajectories on Wages and the Gendered Payoff to Employment." Demography published online (29 January 2020): DOI: 10.1007/s13524-019-00845-8.
2. Weisshaar, Katherine
Cabello-Hutt, Tania
Labor Force Participation: The Long-Term Effects of Employment Trajectories on Wages
Presented: Denver CO, Population Association of America Annual Meeting, April 2018
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Population Association of America
Keyword(s): Employment, Intermittent/Precarious; Gender Differences; Labor Force Participation; Wage Penalty/Career Penalty; Wages

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

We use over 30 years of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) to examine the long-term effects of labor force participation on wages. We document employment trajectories over the life course, and assess to what extent these vary by sex, race, and socioeconomic background, and how they are associated with wages later in life. We find that the trajectory itself -- the timing and extent of intermittent employment -- matters in predicting wages later in life, beyond the duration of intermittency. While women are more likely to follow non-steady employment, women do not incur additional wage penalties compared to men who follow the same non-steady trajectory. Thus, gender inequality in wages derived from intermittency is due to the group composition itself, rather than gendered payoff of a particular pathway. These findings give important insights into the relationship between gender, employment, and wage inequality over the life course.
Bibliography Citation
Weisshaar, Katherine and Tania Cabello-Hutt. "Labor Force Participation: The Long-Term Effects of Employment Trajectories on Wages." Presented: Denver CO, Population Association of America Annual Meeting, April 2018.