Explaining the gender wage gap: The role of the mining industry.

摘要

Why has the gender wage gap in the US persisted over a long period of time in spite of government policies such the Equal Pay Act enacted in 1963? Gender pay lingers and it is projected that it will take some states over a century to completely close the gender wage gap. For instance, Wyoming, with the longest projected time to close the wage gap, is not project to close the gap until 2159.;The question, then, is why do we have varying gender wage gaps across states and why is the gap so low in some states and so wide in others? One potential reason given for the wide gender gap in states like Wyoming is how dominant the mining sector is in these states' economies. The purpose of the study is to investigate the role played by energy extraction in the reported gender wage gap. The results indicate that mining industry is not the driver of gender wage gap in the three energy producing states (Wyoming, North Dakota, and Texas) that were studied.;This study analyses a Current Population Survey (CPS) dataset from 2009 to 2013 to determine the wage differential between men and women by applying the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition method. The Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition method decomposes the wage differential between men and women into a portion explained by differences in productivity characteristics (such as education and experience) and the portion unexplained by differences in productivity characteristics (usually termed discrimination).