13.2 Employment discrimination  (Page 6/18)

Key concepts and summary

Discrimination occurs in a labor market when workers with the same economic characteristics, such as education, experience, and skill, are paid different amounts because of race, gender, religion, age, or disability status. In the United States, female workers on average earn less than male workers, and black workers on average earn less than white workers. There is controversy over the extent to which these earnings gaps can be explained by discrimination or by differences in factors like education and job experience. Free markets can allow discrimination to occur; but the threat of a loss of sales or a loss of productive workers can also create incentives for a firm not to discriminate. A range of public policies can be used to reduce earnings gaps between men and women or between white and other racial/ethnic groups: requiring equal pay for equal work, and attaining more equal educational outcomes.

References

Anderson, Deborah J., Melissa Binder, and Kate Krause. “The Motherhood Wage Penalty Revisited: Experience, Heterogeneity, Work Effort, and Work-Schedule Flexibility.” Industrial and Labor Relations Review . no. 2 (2003): 273–294. http://www2.econ.iastate.edu/classes/econ321/orazem/anderson_motherhood-penalty.pdf.

Turner, Margery Austin, Rob Santos, Diane K. Levy, Doug Wissoker, Claudia Aranda, Rob Pitingolo, and The Urban Institute. “Housing Discrimination Against Racial and Ethnic Minorities 2012.” U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development . Last modified June 2013. http://www.huduser.org/Publications/pdf/HUD-514_HDS2012.pdf.

Austin, Algernon. “The Unfinished March: An Overview.” Economic Policy Institute . Last modified June 18, 2013. http://www.epi.org/publication/unfinished-march-overview/.

Bertrand, Marianne, and Sendhil Mullainathan. “Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination.” American Economic Review . no. 4 (2004): 991-1013. https://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/0002828042002561&fnd=s.

Blau, Francine D., and Laurence M. Kahn. “The Gender Pay Gap: Have Women Gone as Far as They Can?” Academy of Management Perspectives . no. 1 (2007): 7–23. 10.5465/AMP.2007.24286161.

Card, David, and Alan B. Kruger. “Trends in Relative Black–White Earnings Revisited (Working Paper #310).” Princeton University and the National Bureau of Economic Research . December 1992. http://harris.princeton.edu/pubs/pdfs/310.pdf.

Donovan, Theresa. Jurist. “Federal Judge Rejects Class Status in Wal-Mart Discrimination Suit.” Last modified August 5, 2013. http://jurist.org/paperchase/2013/08/federal-judge-rejects-class-status-in-wal-mart-discrimination-suit.php.

Harris, Elizabeth A. “Labor Panel Finds Illegal Punishments at Walmart.” The New York Times , November 18, 2013. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/19/business/labor-panel-finds-illegal-punishments-at-walmart.html?_r=1&.

Kolesnikova, Natalia A., and Yang Liu. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis: The Regional Economist. “Gender Wage Gap May Be Much Smaller Than Most Think.” Last modified October 2011. http://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/re/articles/?id=2160.

Podmolik, Mary Ellen. “HUD Finds Housing Discrimination ‘Hidden’ But Prevalent.” Chicago Tribune: Business , June 12, 2013. http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-06-12/business/ct-biz-0612-housing-discrimination-20130612_1_renters-testers-chicago-area.

Spreen, Thomas Luke. United States Department of Labor: Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Recent College Graduates in the U.S. Labor Force: Data from the Current Population Survey.” Monthly Labor Review (February, 2013). http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2013/02/art1full.pdf .

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: BLS Reports. 2014. “Women in the Labor Force: A Databook (Report 1052).” Accessed April 13, 2015. http://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/cps/women-in-the-labor-force-a-databook-2014.pdf.

U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, “Walmart to Pay More than $11.7 Million to Settle EEOC Sex Discrimination Suit.” Last modified March 1, 2010. http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/newsroom/release/3-1-10.cfm.

United States Census Bureau. 2014. “Table 1. Educational Attainment of the Population 18 Years and Over, by Age, Sex, Race, and Hispanic Origin: 2014.” Accessed April 13, 2015. http://www.census.gov/hhes/socdemo/education/data/cps/2014/tables.html.

United States Department of Labor: Bureau of Labor Statistics. “News Release: Usual Weekly Earnings of Wage and Salary Workers (Third Quarter 2013).” November 1, 2013. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/wkyeng.pdf.

Warner, Judith. 2014. “Fact Sheet: The Women’s Leadership Gap: Women’s Leadership by the Numbers.” Center for American Progress. Accessed March 16, 2015. https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/women/report/2014/03/07/85457/fact-sheet-the-womens-leadership-gap/.

Weinberger, Catherine J., and Lois Joy. “The Relative Earnings of Black College Graduates, 1980–2001.” In Race and Economic Opportunity in the 21st Century , edited by Marlene Kim. New York: Routledge, 2007. http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~weinberg/grads.pdf.