How the 1963 Equal Pay Act and 1964 Civil Rights Act Shaped the Gender Gap in Pay.

ABSTRACT: In the 1960s, two landmark statutes-the Equal Pay and Civil Rights Acts-targeted the long-standing practice of employment discrimination against U.S. women. For the next 15 years, the gender gap in median earnings among full-time, full-year workers changed little, leading many scholars to conclude that the legislation was ineffectual. This article revisits this conclusion using two research designs, which leverage (i) cross-state variation in preexisting state equal pay laws and (ii) variation in the 1960 gender gap across occupation-industry-state-group cells to capture differences in the legislation's incidence. Both designs suggest that federal antidiscrimination legislation led to striking gains in women's relative wages, which were concentrated among below-median wage earners. These w

SUBMITTER: Bailey MJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11226752 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature