Who Cares – and Does it Matter? Measuring Wage Penalties for Caring Work

Hirsch, Barry T.; Manzella, Julia

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2481577

Cited by 3 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…For example, Barron and West (2013) singled out six caring occupations for analysis using British Household Panel Survey data: childcare worker, doctor, nurse, nursing assistant, schoolteacher, and welfare worker. Another approach to the definition of caring jobs ranks all occupations in terms of a care index based on US Department of Labor job descriptions in the O*Net database (Hirsch and Manzella 2015). Attention to specific occupations is certainly relevant to analysis of the labor process, but the effect of employment in care industries also merits consideration.…”

Section: Methodological Issuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Empirical research documents pay penalties in care jobs in the United States and the United Kingdom, controlling for a variety of personal and job characteristics (England, Budig, and Folbre 2002;Barron and West 2013;Hirsch and Manzella 2015;Hodges, Budig, and England 2018;Pietrykowski 2017). Although these penalties are apparent for both genders, women are disproportionately affected through their concentration in care jobs, as noted by advocates of pay equity (England 1992;Barth, Bryson, Davis, and Freeman 2016).…”

Section: Care Work and Wage Determinationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Gender Inequality, Bargaining, and Pay in Care Services in the United States

Folbre¹,

Gautham²,

Smith

2022

ILR Review

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The authors argue that paid providers of care services in the United States (in health, education, and social service industries) are less able than providers of business services to capture value-added or to extract rents because limited consumer sovereignty, incomplete information regarding quality, and large positive externalities reduce their relative market power. In addition, many care jobs enforce normative responsibility for others and require specific skills that limit cross-industry mobility. Analysis of Current Population Survey data for 2014 to 2019 reveals significant pay penalties in care services relative to business services, controlling for factors such as gender, education, occupation, and public or private employment. Women’s concentration in care services explains a significant proportion of the gender wage gap and raises the possibility of significant potential benefits from industry-level bargaining strategies.

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Section: Methodological Issuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Care Work and Wage Determinationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender Inequality, Bargaining, and Pay in Care Services in the United States

Folbre¹,

Gautham²,

Smith

2022

ILR Review

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“…Women also are considerably more likely than men to be employed in non-profit or public-interest jobs. Both men and women pay a care penalty in these jobs, though proportionally more women are affected by it (England et al, 2002;Hirsch and Manzella, 2015;Hodges et al, 2018).…”

Section: We Hypothesize That Environmental Engineering Is Subject To ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental Engineering as Care for Human Welfare and Planetary Health

2022

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Among the sub-disciplines of engineering, environmental engineering is distinctive in three aspects. First, descriptions of the profession of environmental engineering emphasize that environmental engineers solve problems to prevent harm, which typically is an important motivation for taking a job in care work. Second, the percentage of degrees awarded to women is highest for environmental among all sub-disciplines of engineering (i.e., 53.3% of bachelor's degrees, 46.3% of master's degrees, and 43.6% of doctoral degrees in environmental engineering conferred in 2020 were awarded to women). Third, median salaries for environmental engineerscontrolling for other variablesare lowest among engineering subdisciplines (i.e., $82,036 per year in 2019), despite high levels of educational attainment and training. Our analysis of environmental engineers working in the United States strongly suggests that the profession of environmental engineering is highly susceptible to what is known as the care penalty. The care penalty is a function of market dynamics, which tend to undervalue work that generates substantial unpriced benefits for others. The care penalty often is observed in jobs characterized by high levels of intrinsic motivation, such as concern for human welfare.Additional data would be useful to further evaluate the care penalty in environmental engineering in other countries. To address the care penalty, we do not suggest that environmental engineers should become less caring. Rather environmental engineers should be aware of this potential economic risk and seek to mitigate the care penalty in two specific ways.First environmental engineers should encourage life-cycle principles and environmental fullcost accounting in order to increase fungibility among different measures of the components of the triple bottom line of people (i.e., human welfare), planet (i.e., planetary health), and prosperity (i.e., financial gain). Second, environmental engineers should clearly demonstrate the unique contributions that technically skilled commitments to human welfare can generate.We suggest that a greater awareness of these issues could build on and strengthen growing public concerns regarding environmental sustainability. Finally, we suggest that distinctive attributes of environmental engineering may prove critical to unlocking growth in the engineering workforce as care for human welfare and planetary health.

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“…A similar approach has also been extended to the study of specific types of care work, such as nurturant or reproductive care work (Dwyer 2013). Continuous measurement of specific social skill dimensions has begun to develop only recently (Deming 2015; Green 2012; Hirsch and Manzella 2015; Liu and Grusky 2013). Although these latest approaches acknowledge and explore the complexities of social skills, they are still limited in that they focus on a small and predetermined set of social skill categories.…”

Section: Skill Measurement and Dimensionalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Skill Dimensions and Career Dynamics

Wyant

Manzoni

McDonald

2018

Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World

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All work is social, yet little is known about social skill dimensions or how social skill experiences accumulate across careers. Using occupational data (O*NET) on social tasks, the authors identify social skills’ latent dimensions. They find four main types: emotion, communication, coordination, and sales. O*NET provides skill importance scores for each occupation, which the authors link to individual careers (Panel Study of Income Dynamics). The authors then analyze cumulative skill exposure among three cohorts of workers using multitrajectory modeling. They find substantial variability in social skill experience across early-, middle-, and late-career workers. White, female, and highly educated workers are the most likely to accumulate social skill experience, net of total years of experience. Group differences in cumulative exposure to social skill are rooted in early-career experiences. This study enhances the understanding of social skill exposure across careers and has important implications for future research on social stratification and economic inequality.

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Who Cares – and Does it Matter? Measuring Wage Penalties for Caring Work

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

Gender Inequality, Bargaining, and Pay in Care Services in the United States

Gender Inequality, Bargaining, and Pay in Care Services in the United States

Environmental Engineering as Care for Human Welfare and Planetary Health

Social Skill Dimensions and Career Dynamics

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