Wage variance for women, 1979–2007

Wage variance Residual wage variance Composition-adjusted residual wage variance Within-group share of wage variance Composition-adjusted within-group share of wage variance
1979 0.188 0.121 0.132* 0.645 0.699*
1989 0.273 0.151 0.165 0.554 0.604
1995 0.309 0.177 0.191 0.573 0.618
2000 0.301 0.175 0.180 0.582 0.599
2007 0.338 0.201 0.201 0.595 0.595
Change
1979–1989 0.085 0.030 0.033* 0.351 0.393*
1989–2000 0.028 0.024 0.015 0.864 0.552
2000–2007 0.037 0.026 0.021 0.693 0.561

*The 1979 composition-adjusted figures are not directly comparable to other figures because of the major expansion of occupations that occurred between 1982 and 1983.

Note: The residual wage variances are from cross-sectional OLS regressions of log hourly wages on the 250+ detailed occupation dummies along with a quartic in age and dummies for region of the country (using the four major Census regions), marital status, and race/ethnicity (using mutually exclusive categories of white non-Hispanic, black non-Hispanic, Hispanic any race, and other).  The composition-adjusted residual wage variances are calculated according to the procedure described in Lemieux (2006), page 468, using the same set of explanatory variables in the logit as in the wage regressions described above and using 2007 as the base year.

Source: Authors' analysis of Current Population Survey Outgoing Rotation Group microdata

View the underlying data on epi.org.