Wage gap figures question??

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Wed Apr 21 14:00:23 PDT 1999


Marta Russell wrote:


>Looking over the CPS census data I found that women ($24,973) are paid
>less than men ($33,674).
>
>But when I looked for numbers by race, I could choose between per capita
>and household comparisions. Per capita for blacks ($12,351 ), Asian
>($18,226) and Hispanics ($10,773) were less than whites ($20,425). The
>Household figures placed Asians way above whites which must have to do
>with numbers of earners in the household?
>
>The immediate question is why are the figures for men and women so much
>higher? Are the men/women figures not per capita or what? It just
>doesn't look right when you put it all together.

The per capita figures include kids; the numbers for men and women are for those 15 and over, and only include those with income >0. If I'm remembering right, back in the old days, only about half of women had income >0; now it's about 90% or so.

Doug



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