RACIAL-DIFFERENCES IN ACCESS TO HIGH-PAYING JOBS AND THE WAGE GAP BETWEEN BLACK-AND-WHITE WOMEN

The authors examine the role that racial differences in access to high -paying occupations played in determining the racial wage gap in the 1 980s. Analyzing data on black and white women aged 34-44 from the Nati onal Longitudinal Surveys for 1968-88, they estimate the effects of hu man capital characteristics and discrimination on segregation into hig h- and low-wage jobs by race. They find that differences in workers' m easured characteristics explain little of either the observed occupati onal segregation by race or the racial wage gap in 1988. Further analy sis suggests that several changes in the wage structure for women duri ng the 1980s, notably a widening of occupational wage differentials an d an increase in the returns to education, abetted direct discriminati on in enlarging the racial wage gap among women.