Potential Biases in Measuring Male-Female Discrimination

Abstract

By addressing the problem of life-cycle division of labor within the family, this study considers the question of the effect of family characteristics on both male and female earnings capacities. The paper illustrates both theoretically and empirically that being married and having children have opposite effects on the wage rates of husbands and wives, and further that these diverging wage patterns are perpetuated over the length of the marriage. Neglecting the fact that family characteristics have opposite effects on male and female wage structures leads to biases in the computation of the male-female discrimination coefficient.