Wages of Virtue: The Relative Pay of Care Work

Abstract

We examine the relative pay of occupations involving care, such as teaching, counseling, providing health services, or supervising children. We use panel data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Care work pays less than other occupations, after controlling for the education and employment experience of the workers, many job characteristics, and (via individual fixed effects) unmeasured, stable characteristics of those who hold the jobs. Both men and women in care work pay this wage penalty. However, the penalty is paid disproportionately by women since more women than men do this kind of work.

Schools as workplaces: Intersectional regimes of inequality

“…While skill is often defined in terms of a job's perceived complexity and measured using years of education and experience, these are not straightforward objective measures. (Acker, 1990;England, 1992;England, Budig, & Folbre, 2002;Steinberg, 1990). Relational skills are most often overlooked in evaluation frameworks, which is one reason jobs requiring interaction and communication with people consistently suffer a wage penalty (England, 2005;Kilbourne, England, Farkas, Beron, & Weir, 1994).…”

Who likes math where? Gender differences in eighth-graders’ attitudes around the world

“…This might be achieved through changes in the climate of STEM work environments, improved teaching of mathematics and science, increased opportunities for collaborative, creative, selfexpressive work and less negative stereotyping of scientific and technical workers and work. At the same time, we must work to reverse the myriad processes by which female-dominated nontechnical work is devalued socially, culturally and economically (England, Budig, & Folbre, 2002;Ridgeway, 2011).…”

Wage Determination in Social Occupations: The Role of Individual Social Capital

“…Wages paid in occupations labeled as "caring" or "social" have received attention in the economics literature, with the historical focus being the fact that these occupations are dominated by women (e.g., England, Budig, and Folbre 2002;Kilbourne et al 1994;Pitts 2003). Because of this high representation of women, wage penalties associated with the occupations are often identified as an important source of wage differentials between men and women.…”

“…This produces an ex ante classification versus an ex poste classification of occupations. This list of occupations (found in Appendix A) overlaps with those listed by England, Budig, and Folbre (2002) and Hirsch and Manzella (2015) as caring occupations, such as teacher and social worker, but excludes those that might be considered more entrepreneurial, such as doctors and lawyers. The list also 3 overlaps with those that would be considered by Deming (2015) and Ngom (2003) to rely heavily on social skills, such as physical therapist, but exclude those that arguably don't necessarily contribute to the betterment of others, such as cashier and manager.…”

“…Overall, they conclude that the devaluation of occupations dominated by women accounts for between eight percent and 17 percent of the observed pay gap between men and women. Directly focused more on wage differentials across occupations, England, Budig, and Folbre (2002) uncover a five percent penalty (for both men and women) for being in a caring occupation; the authors point out that even though the penalty is similar across men and women, women suffer more from this penalty because there are many more women than men in caring occupations. Also specifically focused on caring occupations, Hirsch and Manzella (2015) find a greater penalty for men, although it appears to be a fairly modest penalty for both men and women (note that they construct a "caring" index whose units are difficult to interpret).…”