| Summary: | A study was conducted to determine the magnitude of wage differentials between men and women. Data were obtained from 5,618 respondents to the 1991 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth; respondents were categorized as having craft, operative, sales, manager, service, professional and technical, or clerical occupations. Results indicate that occupational assignment is the critical determinant of the pay gap—a result consistent with a “crowding” explanation of that gap. When fringe benefits are excluded from the compensation measure, women are found to have received significantly lower compensation than men within 6 of the 7 occupational categories (the “clerical” category was the most female-dominated one). However, when the compensation index includes fringe benefits, a gender coefficient is significant in only the “operatives” category, which contains relatively heterogeneous jobs.
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