The Gender Wage Gap: evidence from the cohort studies

This study will provide a comprehensive analysis of the GWG across individuals' lives, up to the age of 60 in the case of the 1958 cohort, and across three generations.

The detailed information contained in the birth cohorts, including genetic and childhood development data, will be exploited to provide new insights into wage formation, how the GWG evolved, and what policy instruments will be needed to create pay equality.

The project runs through to June 2024.

• Background
• Aims of the project
• Methodology
• Team
• Advisory board
• Outputs 

Background

Nearly half a century after the Equal Pay Act, women still earn less than men and convergence is slow.

The gap grows with family formation, as mothers spend time out of the labour market and face lower pay than previously on returning to employment, particularly part-time.

One view is that the GWG reflects conventional norms about the division of domestic labour, while others point to discriminatory practices in the workplace.

Growing concern about the persistence of the GWG and the way it evolves over the life course and across cohorts prompted the team to start examining the reasons for the GWG.

The project is funded by the ESRC grant number ES/S012583/1.

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Aims of the project

The study will address five related questions:

1. What does the GWG look like over the life-course and across birth cohorts? Does it change later in life and how does it compare across cohorts for people at the same points in their life?
2. How much of the GWG is accounted for by differences in human capital accumulation over the life-course? How different does the wage gap look over the life-course for men and women with similar human capital (qualifications and labour market experience)? 
3. What role do parenthood and caring responsibilities play in the emergence of the GWG in mid-life and how persistent is this penalty over the life-course?
4. How much of the gap is attributable to the sorts of jobs undertaken by men and women, particularly in relation to occupation and part-time status?
5. What role do childhood attributes and experiences play in determining the subsequent GWG and do childhood influences still matter having accounted for early adulthood experiences?

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Methodology

By analysing nationally representative birth cohort data for people born in 1958, 1970 and 1989/90 this study addresses the topic from three angles:

1. We consider the evolution of the GWG over the whole life-course. This is important because factors governing both selection into employment and wage determination vary for men and women well into later life.
2. Because we track people from birth, we obtain a picture of the links between childhood circumstances, skills and experiences and subsequent earnings for men and women – and thus the size of the wage gap.
3. We distinguish between the effects of ageing and birth cohort, something that is only possible with data tracking multiple birth cohorts.

We anticipate cohort effects will be important for three reasons:

1. Different cohorts are exposed to different labour market and policy conditions during their lifetimes. For instance, the 1958 cohort left school when the Equal Pay Act was first being implemented whereas the Act had been in place for a decade when the 1970 cohort left compulsory education.
2. The education gap between men and women has disappeared and even reversed, such that the returns to employment will have shifted markedly between men and women across the generations.
3. Attitudes to women's labour market participation and men's household production have shifted. These changes in social norms, together with attendant changes in public policy, have created opportunities for men and women to combine paid and unpaid work and leisure in ways not hitherto possible, with uncertain consequences for the life choices and earnings patterns of men and women across the life-course.

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Team

The team are all members of the Social Research Institute: 

Principal investigator 

• Professor Alex Bryson

Co-investigators

• Professor Heather Joshi
• David Wilkinson
• Dr Bozena Wielgoszewska
• Dr Francesca Foliano

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Advisory board

The team will be supported by a ten-strong advisory group:

• Julie Denis, Acas
• Jane Waldfogel, Columbia University
• Eleanor Gall and Rebecca Thomas, Equality and Human Rights Commission
• James Heagerty, Government Equalities Office
• Monica Costa-Dias, Institute for Fiscal Studies
• Gregory Thwaites, The Resolution Foundation
• Nikki Pound, Trades Union Congress

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Outputs

• Do Women Pay for Working from Home? Exploring Gender Gaps in Pay and Wellbeing by Work Location in the UK Cohort Studies –
  Bożena Wielgoszewska; Alex Bryson; Heather Joshi; David Wilkinson; 2024
• Exploring Social Inequalities through National Datasets – Jools Kasmire, Nissa Finney, Bożena Wielgoszewska, 22 October 2024
• The gender wage gap over the lifecourse: does the genetic predisposition for educational attainment matter? Presented by Alex Bryson at CLS Lunchtime Talk, 15 October 2024
• Gender wage gap among young adults: A comparison across British cohorts, Francesca Foliano, Alex Bryson, Heather Joshi, Bożena Wielgoszewska, Labour Economics, Volume 91, December 2024, 102614
• The Gender Wage Gap across Life: Effects of Genetic Predisposition Towards Higher Educational Attainment – IZA Discussion Paper Number 17255, Alex Bryson, Tim Morris, David Bann, David Wilkinson, August 2024
• The Gender Pay Gap: Decline and Deceleration, Heather Joshi, Alex Bryson, David Wilkinson, Francesca Foliano, Bozena Wielgoszewska, IOE Blog, July 2024
• “The gender wage gap” – A talk to sixth formers at St Helen and St Katharine School, Abingdon, Oxfordshire
• The gender wage gap: Evidence from the cohort studies – materials from the end-of-project event on 5 June 2024, presented at the British Academy, London
• Gender Wage Gap Advisory Group Presentation, Bozena Wielgoszewska, Gender Wage Gap Advisory Group, 18 April 2024
• Gender and paid work in the pandemic: Do women pay for working from home? Presentation, Bozena Wielgoszewska, British Journal of Sociology Conference, 15–16 April 2024
• The gender furlough gap: Why did women stop working at higher rates than men? UKDS. Bozena Wielgoszewska. 12 February 2024
• The gender wage gap among those born in 1958: A matching estimator approach Presentation, Alex Bryson, 23 November 2023, IAB Colloquium Nuremberg Germany
• Gender and paid work in the pandemic: do women pay for working from home? Presentation, Bozena Wielgoszewska, 7 November 2023
• The gender furlough gap: Why did women stop working at higher rates than men? – Blog Post, Bozena Wielgoszewska, September 2023
• Gender Wage Gap among Young Adults: A Comparison across British Cohorts – Presentation at the Gender Gaps Conference 2023, Warsaw
• Examining the size of the gender wage gap within and across birth cohorts, Seminar at École Normale Supérieure, Paris, 21st April 2023 – Alex Bryson
• The Gender Wage Gap Among Those Born in 1958: A Matching Estimator Approach – Presented at: 25th Colloquium of Personnel Economics, Amsterdam, Netherlands
• Examining the size of the gender wage gap within and across birth cohorts – HM Treasury Seminar, London
• Exploring the Reasons for Labour Market Gender Inequality a Year into the Covid-19 Pandemic: Evidence from the UK Cohort Studies – Bożena Wielgoszewska, Alex Bryson, Monica Costa-Dias Francesca Foliano, Heather Joshi and David Wilkinson 
• Gender Wage Gap among Young Adults: A Comparison across British Cohorts, IZA DP No. 15973
• Placing context in longitudinal research: 2021 John Bynner Award for Distinguished Scholarship invited lecture – SLLS conference October 2022 (Material from the Gender Wage Gap project used as an example in this lecture)
• Gender inequality in employment after first year of the Covid Pandemic – Society for Longitudinal and Life Course Studies Conference, October 2022
• Placing Context in Longitudinal Research – Invited lecture John Bynner Award, by Heather Joshi, Society for Longitudinal and Life Course Studies Conference, October 2022
• Gender wage gap among young adults: A comparison across British cohorts, EALE 2022 Conference – University of Padua, 8–10 September 2022
• Gender wage gap among young adults: A comparison across British cohorts, AIEL 2022 Conference – University of Salerno, 23 and 24 September 2022
• Gender wage gap among young adults: a comparison across British cohorts, WPEG 2022 Conference – University of Sheffield, 19th July 2022
• The Gender Wage Gap Among University Vice Chancellors in the UK. Ray Bachan and Alex Bryson, Labour Economics
• Labour Market Gender Inequality a Year into the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from the UK Cohort Studies. Work, Pensions and Economics Group Annual Conference – 19 July 2022
• Parenthood and Paid Work: compatibility in the British Economy. Presented by Heather Joshi to the Birkbeck Department of Economics, 50th Anniversary Conference
• Are Women Doing It For Themselves? Gender Segregation and the Gender Pay Gap, Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics – Theodoropoulos, N., Forth, J. and Bryson, A – 2022
• Labour Market Gender Inequality a Year into the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from the UK Cohort Studies – Presented by Alex Bryson at the Society of the Economics of the Household Conference, 23 May 2022
• Covid-19 and gender equality – Dr Bożena Wielgoszewska, UCL lunch hour lecture 26 April 2022. Video recording and podcast
• Social Research Institute (SRI) gender equality workshop – Organised by Dr Bożena Wielgoszewska and Dr Francesca Foliano, 21 April 2022
• Examining the size of the gender wage gap within and across birth cohorts – Presented by Alex Bryson to the Department of Economics at Maynooth University, 29 April 2022
• The Gender Wage Gap Among Those Born in 1958: A Matching Estimator Approach – Presented by Alex Bryson at the UCL SRI Gender Equality Workshop
• How did the gender pay gap change over the last fifty years? Evidence from within and across birth cohorts, ISER-University of Essex, 31 March 2022
• Exploring the Reasons for Labour Market Gender Inequality a Year into the Covid-19 Pandemic: Evidence from the UK Cohort Studies – Bozena Wielgoszewska presentation to the Royal Economic Society Annual Conference, 11 April 2022
• The gender wage gap among Vice Chancellors in the UK, Colloquium on Personnel Economics – Alex Bryson presentation at Aarhus University, Herning (Denmark) on 17 March 2022
• Examining the size of the gender wage gap within and across birth cohorts – by Alex Bryson to University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, School of Economics, Business and Society, 2 February 2022
• Examining the size of the gender wage gap within and across birth cohorts – by Alex Bryson to Queen Mary University of London, Centre for Research in Equality and Diversity seminar, 8 December 2021
• Has the pandemic changed how to motivate employees? – Alex Bryson on Employee Benefits, 19 October 2021
• Exploring the reasons for labour market gender inequality a year into the Covid-19 pandemic: Evidence from the UK cohort studies – Bożena Wielgoszewska’s presentation at the Society of Longitudinal and Life Course Studies Conference, 20 September 2021
• Gender wage gap among young adults: A comparison across British cohorts – Francesca Foliano’s presentation at the Society of Longitudinal and Life Course Studies Conference, 20 September 2021
• Exploring the Reasons for Labour Market Gender Inequality a Year into the Covid-19 Pandemic: Evidence from the UK Cohort Studies (PDF) – Bożena Wielgoszewska, Alex Bryson, Monica Costa-Dias, Francesca Foliano, Heather Joshi and David Wilkinson, August 2021
• Examining the size of the gender wage gap within and across birth cohorts: some reflections on methodological challenges – Conference on Life course Analysis: Data and Methodological Challenges, ISER, University of Essex, 7 July 2021
• Labour Market Gender Equality in the UK a year after the Covid-19 outbreak (pdf, 0.4MB) – watch the presentation, 17 June 2021
• The Gender Pay Gap in the British cohort studies, past, present – Heather Joshi’s presentation to the UCL Institute of Clinical Trials and Methodology, 7 June 2021
• The gender wage gap among young adults: a comparison across British cohorts – presentation at the Royal Economic Society Annual Conference, 13 April 2021
• The Gender Wage Gap Among Vice Chancellors in the UK – UCL Lunch Time Lecture presented by Professor Alex Bryson
• Understanding gender gaps in the labour market – Francesca Foliano, Alex Bryson, Astrid Kunze, Abi Adams-Prassl, Ghazala Azmat and Emma Duchini, presentation at the RES 2021 Annual Conference, 13 April 2021
• The Gender Wage Gap Among University Vice Chancellors in the UK – Ray Bachan and Alex Bryson
• How long must women wait for equal pay? Data Impact Blog, 3 February 2021
• How long must women wait for equal pay? IOE Blog, 2 February 2021
• Bryson, A., Joshi, H., Wielgoszewska, B. and Wilkinson, D. (2020). A short history of the gender wage gap in Britain, Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 36, 4: 836–854
• Important discoveries from the 1970 British Cohort Study – The gender wage gap, news story by Heather Joshi on the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70) website, 14 January 2021
• Joshi, H,. Bryson, A,. Wilkinson, D. and Ward, K. (2020). The gender gap in wages over the life course: evidence from a British cohort born in 1958, Gender, Work & Organization. doi: 10.1111/gwao.12580
• The Gender Wage Gap among university Vice Chancellors in the UK, presented by Alex Bryson at the University of Bournemouth, 11 November 2020
• Parenthood and Paid Work: conflict, compromise and compatibility, presented by Heather Joshi at International Conference on Gender Research, July 16 2020
• Social mobility, the 2000s and the gender pay gap, 50 Years of Life in Britain Podcast featuring Heather Joshi (from 5 mins, 31 seconds) speaking about the gender wage gap
• Parenthood and Paid Work: Conflict, Compromise and Compatibility, Heather Joshi (2020)
• A Short History of the Gender Wage Gap in Britain (PDF, 0.6MB), IZA Discussion Paper
• A Short History of the Gender Wage Gap, presentation at QSS Seminar 
• Are women doing it for themselves? Female managers and the gender wage gap, presentation at the Paris School of Economics Labour and Public Economics seminar
• Gender segregation, female managers and the gender wage gap (PDF, 0.2MB), presentation to the Annual Conference of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD) 
• How women managers close the gender wage gap, IOE London Blog, UCL
• The gender gap in wages over the life course: evidence from a British cohort born in 1958 (PDF, 0.7MB), IZA Discussion Paper
• Are women doing it for themselves? Gender segregation and the gender wage gap (PDF, 0.6MB), IZA Discussion Paper
• Why do we need longitudinal survey data? IZA World of Labor
• The gender pay gap from the perspective of people born in 1958, Data Impact Blog, UK Data Service
• The gender pay gap: evidence from the National Child Development Survey (PDF, 0.9MB), Heather Joshi’s presentation to the European Association of Labour Economists, Uppsala, Sweden

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Social Research Institute
IOE, UCL's Faculty of Education and Society
University College London
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London WC1H 0AL

email: a.bryson@ucl.ac.uk