Education Won’t Fix This: The Relationship Between Job Quality Change, Education and the Gender Wage Gap, 1985-2017

• In Event: Promising Scholarship in Education Research: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research

Abstract

Education Won’t Fix This: The Relationship Between Job Quality Change, Education and the Gender Wage Gap, 1985-2017

The United States is unique among highly developed countries in that many critical benefits are only available (or affordable) through employers. However, benefits vary between employers and by gender (Hodges 2020). Consequently, job quality, defined as employer provided benefits, including but not limited to, medical insurance and retirement, is a significant axis of stratification separate from wages and much less studied. Using nationally representative, longitudinal data from 1985 to 2017, I expand beyond previous research on job quality by including additional measures that are likely important for women’s employment. I examine job quality and gender in three contexts (1) changes in job quality over time; (2) predictors of job quality; and (3) how changes in job quality can be explained by gender compositional changes in educational attainment and hourly wages. Preliminary findings suggest that job quality has declined over time for both men and women. Education and hourly wages strongly predict job quality but are more highly predictive for women in comparison to men. Women’s job quality did not decline as severely in comparison to men, because they increased their educational attainment more than men. However, it declined more than expected due to women’s unequal representation across hourly wage terciles. These results suggest that education cannot solve labor market gender inequalities. In addition, these results indicate that, to reduce labor market gender inequalities, employer provided benefits are an inadequate replacement for federal employment policies and a robust social safety.

Author

• Shauna Dyer, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor