Decomposing Trends in the Gender Gap for Highly Educated Workers
by Joseph G. Altonji, John Eric Humphries, Yagmur Yuksel and Ling Zhong
Abstract: This paper studies the gender gap among full time college educated workers born between 1931 and 1984, focusing on the differential contribution of undergraduate field, graduate degree attainment and field, and field specific returns. Using rich data from the National Survey of College Graduates and other sources on college graduates and their labor market outcomes, we decompose trends in the gender earnings gap across birth cohorts into (a) trends in a cohort and gender specific component that affects all college graduates the same, (b) trends in the gender gap in earnings due to differences in the relative return for a given undergraduate and graduate degree field combination, and (c) trends in gender differences in the composition of undergraduate and graduate degrees. We start by decomposing the earnings gap across cohorts, and then distinguish effects that operate through occupation and effects that operate within occupations. We also decompose the effect of education into changes in the gender gap in college major choice, changes in the gender gap in graduate degree attainment conditional college major, and changes in graduate field conditional on college major and having a graduate degree.