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Posts Tagged ‘pay’

The Gender Wage Gap, by State

We have blogged and written extensively about the gender pay gap, much of which is not attributable to discrimination, as is commonly invoked. President Obama has taken up the cause; he recently signed two executive orders aimed at closing the gap.  Business Insider recently posted a state-by-state breakdown of the gender wage gap. It is interesting to look at but keep in mind the non-discriminatory factors that contribute to the gap, and therefore consider these numbers with some skepticism:

Wyoming has the biggest pay gap — the median male full-time worker made $51,932, and the median female full-time worker made $33,152. The male worker thus made 56.6% more than the female worker.

Washington, D.C. had the smallest gap — there, men make 11.0% more than women. Among the states, Maryland and Nevada had the smallest gaps, both at 17.2%.


A Unified Theory of Why Women Earn Less

When it comes to the year 1991, history books will undoubtedly focus on the first Gulf War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, but at least domestically, the biggest change was one you probably never heard about: 1991 was the first year that women overtook men in college attainment, a trend that has only gained steam since. Today 37.2% of women between the ages of 25 to 29 have a four-year college degree or higher versus just 29.8% for men.

Yet for all the academic achievement by women, men still earn a higher wage for equivalent jobs and continue to dominate the highest ranks of society. Senior management positions? Only one in five are held by women. Fortune 500 CEOs? Just 4% and fewer than 17% of the seats in Congress are held by women. 

Scholars have long theorized about the reasons why women haven’t made faster progress in breaking through the glass ceiling. Personally, we think that much of it boils down to this: men and women have different preferences for competitiveness, and at least part of the wage gaps we see are a result of men and women responding differently to incentives.


The Sharapova Effect

A recent paper (full PDF here) by Young Hoon Lee and Seung Chan Ahn makes a clever point about occupations in which people are paid for a main activity and a secondary area where success depends on productivity in the main activity.  If success in the latter also depends on some other characteristic, people who are well-endowed with that characteristic will invest more in the skills needed to be productive in the main activity: the incentives created by that synergy will spill over to earnings in the main activity. 

Their example is the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA).  Better-looking golfers get lower scores (perform better) — but only going from average-lookers to the best-looking. Below the average, there’s no effect of differences in looks on tournament scores.  That makes sense — you probably won’t get more endorsement opportunities if you’re average-looking instead of bad-looking.  Although not golf, one might call this the Sharapova Effect. Are there other labor markets, or other activities, in which a similarly unusual synergy exists??


Would Paying Politicians More Attract Better Politicians?

Whenever you look at a political system and find it wanting, one tempting thought is this: Maybe we have subpar politicians because the job simply isn’t attracting the right people. And, therefore, if we were to significantly raise politicians’ salaries, we would attract a better class of politician.

This is an unpopular argument for various reasons, in part because it would be the politicians themselves who have to lobby for higher salaries, and that isn’t politically feasible (especially in a poor economy). Can you imagine the headlines?

But the idea remains attractive, doesn’t it? The idea is that, by raising the salaries of elected and other government officials, you would a) signal the true importance of the job; b) attract a kind of competent person who might otherwise enter a more remunerative field; c) allow politicians to focus more on the task at hand rather than worry about their income; and d)  make politicians less susceptible to the influence of moneyed interests.


Radical Reform of Executive Pay

The recent proposal by the Fed to regulate bankers’ compensation practices is understandable given the events of the past two years, but setting caps on salaries and bonuses misses the fundamental problem of compensation on Wall Street. Despite the public resentment surrounding finance-industry payouts, the fact is that no one objects to paying for performance. We just want to make sure we’re not getting fleeced or paying for pure dumb luck, and this is where the problem lies.


What Would Micropayments Do for Journalism? A Freakonomics Quorum

The notion of micropayments — a pay-per-click/download web model — is hardly a new one. But as a business model it hasn’t exactly caught fire, or even generated more than an occasional spark. Lately, however, the journalism community has become obsessed with the idea. This is what happens when an existing business model begins to collapse: alternative models are desperately . . .


What Can Magazines Learn From an Air-Conditioner Company?

Photo: Joe Shlabotnik The other day I had a company come and remove two air conditioners from my office in order to clean them, store them for the winter, and return them in the spring. It wasn’t cheap: $269 for the first one and $249 for the second. But I like air conditioning, and I figured it was worthwhile to . . .