The Occupational Feminization of Wages

Abstract

This article updates the 1995 study by Macpherson and Hirsch that used monthly Current Population Survey (CPS) data from 1973 to 1993 to examine the effects of occupational gender composition on earnings. In the updating process, the authors correct for biases in this data set that are attributable to the inclusion of imputed earners and the misreporting of occupation. They use CPS data from 1996 to 2010 to provide cross-sectional estimates of the impact of the feminization of occupations on wages, as well as its contribution to the gender wage gap. Longitudinal CPS data indicate that the negative effects of gender composition on earnings observed in cross-sectional data are lessened when researchers control for observed heterogeneity and are much reduced when controlling for unobserved heterogeneity. These findings are confirmed using much longer panels from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79). Finally, the use of synthetic panels of aging cohorts suggests that wage penalties are largest for younger cohorts in predominantly female occupations.