Document Type
Article
Publication Date
4-2014
Publication Title
American Economic Journal. Applied Economics
Department
Department of Economics
Abstract
Male-female wage gaps declined significantly over the 1980s and 1990s, while returns to education increased. In this paper, we use cross-city data to explore whether, like the return to education, the change in the gender wage gap may reflect changes in skill prices induced by the diffusion of information technology. We show that male-female and education-wage differentials moved in opposite directions in response to the adoption of PCs. Our most credible estimates simply that changes in skill prices driven by PC adoption can explain most of the decline in the US male-female wage gap since 1980.
DOI
10.1257/app.6.2.178
Dartmouth Digital Commons Citation
Beaudry, Paul and Lewis, Ethan, "Do Male-Female Wage Differentials Reflect Differences in the Return to Skill? Cross-City Evidence from 1980–2000" (2014). Dartmouth Scholarship. 2376.
https://digitalcommons.dartmouth.edu/facoa/2376
