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After much research, I have found a few studies that are related to my topic: Is there a relationship between gender and average salary earnings? I started my research online by first going to Google and typing in “Male versus females and average wage earnings.” On the top of the list of websites that are and somewhat related to my topic, I found an article, Male Versus Female Earnings – Is the Gender Gap Converging, written by Kelly Rathje from "The Expert Witness Newsletter". http://www.economica.ca/ew71p2.htm In their study, the author stated that on average, men in the population do tend to earn more than women. “A number of reasons may be offered for this, including: labor force discrimination, different occupation choices, differences in labor force participation trends, and so forth. In 1967, women’s earnings were approximately 58% of men’s earnings. By 1997, women’s earnings were approximately 73% of men’s earnings.” A recent paper by Michael Shannon and Michael Kidd did a study based on recent Canadian data on the size of the wage gap between men and women in the future. Based on current trends in educational attainment and labor force participation, the study that they both conducted concluded by 2031, there will be a 22 percent wage difference between males and females.
The website goes into further detail, describing the reasons that can attitude to the factors that the study presented. For instance, the reasons that the website gave for the average wage difference between males and females is attributed to education attainment and labor force participation. In recent years, the study concluded that women have increased their educational level in the 25 to 29 year olds compared to 55 to 59 year olds. Compared side to side, women today tend to be better education than women whom are older. “In 2000, approximately 22 percent of women (aged 25–64) had a high school diploma, 32 percent had a post-secondary diploma, 14 percent had a bachelor’s degree, and 5 percent had a graduate degree. By 2031 it is predicted that approximately 17 percent of women will have a high school diploma, 35 percent will have a post-secondary diploma, 18 percent will have a bachelor’s degree, and 8 percent will have a graduate degree.” Women today tend to be going into fields where males use to dominant, such as the engineering programs and applied sciences. Today, women are closing the gap between males and females at large universities around the country. In the past where males would be the ones whom would further their education, women have increased their presence in terms of university studies where males have typically remained the same for the last thirty years. The study also includes labor force participation. “Another factor that influences women’s earnings is that they tend to take time away from the labor force (either to withdraw entirely or to reduce hours to part-time status) for a period of time – as is common for women who choose to have families. Thus, women, on average, bring less experience to their jobs, which mean they tend to have lower incomes at any given age.” The website gives a particular interesting study that relates to our study between high school job holding males and females. It was concluded that women today do earn less than males on average. This is relevant to our personal study because the population of the United States is saying that women on average earn less than males. The question that is then asked is whether the pollution of males and females 20 years and up relates to the population of high school students.
Another similar website that I found relating to the subject as described above, provides information about the wage gap. Also from “The Expert Witness Newspaper”, http://www.economica.ca/ew23p1.htm , the article provides possible reasons why there is a wage gap between men and women. “As we know, women, on average, tend to earn less money than men. In fact, in 1991, average income for women was only 61.5 percent of that for men. However, part of this gap is because a higher proportion of women workers are part-time. If we compare women working full-time to men working full-time, we find that (in 1991), women earned about 70 percent as much as men.” The article further investigates the 30 remaining percentage points between men and women. In this article, the authors asked whether education is the possible reason for the wage gap. They concluded it was not. Even when the researchers compared both men and women with the same amount of education, the wage gap remains. For instance, statistics indicate that Canadian women with university degrees earn only 72% as Canadian men with the same degrees. The researchers then questioned whether the wage gap could be contributed to labor force discrimination. Also, the researchers concluded that other factors instead of labor force discrimination that could contribute to the wage gap. “One source is that women tend to work fewer years in total, over their careers, than do men – they have a greater tendency to interrupt their careers and withdraw from the labor force (especially to raise children), and they are also more likely than men to work part-time. These factors are reflected in labor force statistics which indicate that while 95 percent of 25–44 year old male workers are employed full-time, only 77 percent of women workers of the same age are full-time. These factors effectively reduce the average amount of work experience that women accumulate over their careers (part of what economists call human capital). So because women, on average, bring less experience to their jobs, they also tend to earn lower incomes at any given age. Based on this, we might expect that if we compared men and women in the same jobs, with the same education, and the same amount of work experience, the wage gap would disappear. However, that is not the case. A Canadian study examined this question by surveying men and women who graduated from Canadian universities in 1982 and comparing their annual incomes two years and five years after graduation. The study compared men and women who had completed the same type of degree in university and who had worked continuously over the study period. The conclusion was that, even when controlling for education and experience factors, women still earned less than men – after two years the study found that the women graduates were earning 88 percent as much as men, and after five years they were earning about 82 percent. This trend was visible even for women with master’s and doctoral degrees (though women with doctorates in medical and health sciences were earning more than their male counterparts after two and five years). A particularly notable result is that, on average, the gap between men’s and women’s earnings actually increased as their careers progressed.” The possible careers that women choose due influence the wage gap between men and women. It is concluded that women tend to put themselves in positions where they can in the future take a temporary leave or drop down to part-time.
After looking online through the numerous websites available, I found that there was not a direct study that was done on the average wage earnings between teenage males and females. Numerous studies have been done relating to the fields of medicine, science and engineering. Such examples include whether or not there was a difference between the earnings of female doctors versus male doctors. It there a trend that shows that on average female doctors earn significantly less than male doctors? http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/issuebrf/sib99352.htm In a website titled, “How Large is the Gap in Salaries of male and Female Engineers?” concluded that women do earn less than males. “Recent studies have found that in the United States, women earn between 71-74 cents for every dollar earned by men. However, such findings often do not take into account a variety of factors that alone or together may explain much of this gap between men’s and women’s salaries.” The study that was conducted examined whether there was a salary gap between male or female engineers, a career that only 10% of the female population held in 1995. Using a multivariate regression analysis, the authors wanted to explore various reasons for such a gap. The study showed that the gap was due primarily to women’s smaller years of experience since earning their baccalaureate degrees than males. It was concluded that males and females with the same amount of experience do earn the same amount though, helping to the support the claim that males and females do earn the same in the same type of career with the same degrees and the same years of experience. There were graphs that were presented that show that males and females do somewhat have a salary gap, but over time, the two tend to overlap and earn the same salary. Even if there was a salary gap, the data that was collected and examine presents that there really is not a large gap that makes the study significantly different.
Based on my research, there are many views that I found relating to my subject. Even though I could not really find any direct studies that studies whether teenage males or females earn the same amount of money, I found interesting data about the adult population which seems to come to a typical conclusion, which is that women do earn less than men. Even thought there are many views on why women tend to earn less than males, the typical consensus is that the wage gap between males and females is related somewhat to education, work experience, and a person’s attitude in maintaining their career. While looking online at Google, I found numerous articles that relates my subject to job discrimination and racism. Relevant or not, the main point is that there appears to be a gap in wages between men and women. Multiple studies have been conducted and there does not appear to be a definite answer to the wage gap question.
