Gender Pay Differentials among the Teenage Labor Force

• In Event: 366 - Open Refereed Roundtable Session II
  In Refereed Roundtable: B. Table 19 Sociology of Work/Labor II

Abstract

Gender wage gap is among the most persistent and durable characteristics of labor markets and women’s lives. Despite differences in focus, almost all studies of the gender wage gap focus on the adult labor market, however almost every teenager in the United States works before adulthood. Therefore, an overwhelming majority of the population experience the labor market, and possibly the gender wage gap, well beforehand. This article focuses on the early labor market experiences of youth and analyzes the gender differentials in earning in the youth labor market.
Based on a maximum likelihood estimation with modeled heteroskedasticity using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth (NLSY97), the findings show there are no gender differences in wages for 12-13 year-old youth. However, we see the emergence of the gender wage gap around fourteen, which widens with age. The wage differential in the early labor market is explained mostly by occupational factors such as types of jobs boys and girls are employed in. However, the “cost of being a girl” still remains.

Author

• Yasemin Besen-Cassino, Montclair State University