1963年《同工同酬法》与1964年《民权法》如何塑造性别薪酬差距
How the 1963 Equal Pay Act and 1964 Civil Rights Act Shaped the Gender Gap in Pay
Quarterly Journal of Economics · 2024 · [{"name": "Martha Bailey", "affiliation": ["National Bureau of Economic Research", "University of California, Los Angeles"]}, {"name": "Thomas Helgerman", "affiliation": ["National Bureau of Economic Research", "University of California, Los Angeles"]}, {"name": "Bryan A. Stuart", "affiliation": ["National Bureau of Economic Research", "University of California, Los Angeles"]}]
中文摘要
20世纪60年代，两部具有里程碑意义的法律——《同工同酬法》与《民权法》——旨在遏制美国长期存在的针对女性的就业歧视做法。此后15年间，全年全职劳动者收入中位数的性别差距几乎没有变化，许多学者因此得出结论，认为这些立法并未奏效。本文采用两种研究设计重新审视这一结论：其一，利用各州原有同工同酬法律的跨州差异；其二，利用1960年职业—行业—州—群体单元之间性别差距的差异，以捕捉这些立法影响程度的差别。两种研究设计均表明，联邦反歧视立法显著提高了女性的相对工资，且这种提升集中于工资低于中位数的劳动者。这些工资提升抵消了原有劳动力市场力量的影响——这些力量原本会压低女性相对薪酬的增长——从而造成20世纪60年代和70年代性别差距在中位数和均值上表面稳定的现象。数据几乎未显示女性就业在短期内发生变化，但表明企业在中长期减少了对女性的雇用和晋升。历史记录显示，《同工同酬法》在推动这些变化中发挥了关键作用。
Abstract
In the 1960s, two landmark statutes-the Equal Pay and Civil Rights Acts-targeted the long-standing practice of employment discrimination against U.S. women. For the next 15 years, the gender gap in median earnings among full-time, full-year workers changed little, leading many scholars to conclude that the legislation was ineffectual. This article revisits this conclusion using two research designs, which leverage (i) cross-state variation in preexisting state equal pay laws and (ii) variation in the 1960 gender gap across occupation-industry-state-group cells to capture differences in the legislation's incidence. Both designs suggest that federal antidiscrimination legislation led to striking gains in women's relative wages, which were concentrated among below-median wage earners. These wage gains offset preexisting labor market forces, which worked to depress women's relative pay growth, resulting in the apparent stability of the gender gap at the median and mean in the 1960s and 1970s. The data show little evidence of short-term changes in women's employment but suggest that firms reduced their hiring and promotion of women in the medium to long term. The historical record points to the key role of the Equal Pay Act in driving these changes.