{"id":383,"date":"2003-09-22T11:51:32","date_gmt":"2003-09-22T19:51:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2003\/09\/22\/different-ways-of-measuring-the-pay-gap-wage-gap-series-part-1\/"},"modified":"2016-08-05T19:13:59","modified_gmt":"2016-08-06T02:13:59","slug":"different-ways-of-measuring-the-pay-gap-wage-gap-series-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=383","title":{"rendered":"Different ways of measuring the pay gap (wage gap series, part 1)"},"content":{"rendered":"

(This is one of a series of posts on the wage gap<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

There are a literally unlimited number of ways one could go about measuring the pay gap between men and women. Here’s six ways, for example.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Compare wages among young workers only, excluding mothers. (98%<\/a>)<\/li>\n
  2. Compare hourly wages among all workers.<\/li>\n
  3. Compare weekly wages among all full-time workers. (76% – pdf file<\/a>)<\/li>\n
  4. Compare annual wages among all full-time, year round (FTYR) workers. (73% – pdf file<\/a>)<\/li>\n
  5. Compare total annual income (wages plus benefits, pension, perks and bonuses) among FTYR workers.<\/li>\n
  6. Compare total income over the course of an entire work life.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I’ve arranged this list in order of how big the wage gap is. So if you measure by method number 1, you’ll find a relatively small wage gap – which is why conservatives so often use this method. Measuring with method number 2 will find a larger pay gap than method 1, number 3 will be larger still, and so on until method number 6 – which will find the largest pay gap of all.<\/p>\n

    The choice of where to measure is, to some degree, arbitrary; no one way of measuring is absolutely correct. Usually, when you see a pay gap figure in the newspaper, it’s measured by the third method I’ve listed – it’s comparing average weekly wages for full-time working women to average weekly wages for full-time working men. The reason most people use this figure is because that’s the way the U.S. government measures it, which means the figure is always conveniently available.<\/p>\n

    Each of these ways of measuring the pay gap includes and leaves out different things. For instance, if you just compare weekly wages among full-time workers (which is how the government does it), you leave out the value of benefits like medical insurance – but since men are more likely to be in jobs that pay benefits, not including benefits underestimates the size of the pay gap.<\/p>\n

    On the other hand, a conservative might reply, even among full-time workers men work more hours on average than women, so the weekly wage comparison overestimates the wage gap. (I’ll be responding to this argument later in this series).<\/p>\n

    The point is, no one way of measuring the wage gap is perfect, or can cover everything. The wage gap is useful as a broad indication of problems that exist in our economy, and as a way of examining how women’s relative pay has changed over time – but it’s not a precise measure.<\/p>\n

    More on the wage gap tomorrow.<\/p>\n

    (EDIT: In my first draft, I somehow wrote the same thing, slightly rephrased, for methods one and two. I went back and rewrote them to correct this error…)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    (This is one of a series of posts on the wage gap.) There are a literally unlimited number of ways one could go about measuring the pay gap between men and women. Here’s six ways, for example. Compare wages among … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,94,97],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics-and-the-like","category-gender-and-the-economy","category-the-wage-gap-series"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=383"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22150,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383\/revisions\/22150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}