The Earnings of Women and Ethnic Minorities, 1959–1979

Abstract

Using 1980 Census data, the authors present estimates of annual earnings equations for twelve ethnic and racial groups, by gender, for 1979, and compare their results with an earlier study's estimates for 1959 and 1969. All minority men and women except Asian Indian and Japanese men earned less than white men in the years for which data were available. The earnings gap for most groups of men and women, however, declined over those years, and the portion of that gap that might be assignable to discrimination (the unexplained “residual”) also declined. A notable exception was white women, whose mean earnings relative to white men's changed little between 1969 and 1979, even when corrected for differences in productive characteristics.