Changes in the Male/Female Wage Gap, 1976-85

This study uses detailed information on work experience, tenure, and on-the-job training collected in the 1976 and 1985 questionnaires of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to account for changes in wage differentials between white men and white women over these nine years. Decompositions of changes in the wage gap are used to illustrate the contribution of individual factors. Between 1976 and 1985 the wage gap between white men and women narrowed by approximately 4 percent. This study finds that nearly 50 percent of this reduction was due to average changes in job tenure and other work history variables over this period.