Gender and the new inequality: Explaining the college/non-college wage gap

The new inequality is often characterized by the increasing wage gal, betwe en workers with a college education and those without. Yet, although the ga p in hourly wages between college-educated and non-college-educated women i s high and rising, the topic has been overshadowed by research on gender in equality and wage inequality among men. Using the 1990 5-percent Public USE Microdata Samples, independent sources of macro darn, and controls for ind ividual human capital characteristics, I examine the association between th e college/non-college wage gap and key aspects of local economic conditions for women and men. While the college/non-college wage gap among women is c omparable in size to the gap among men, significant gender differences emer ge in the underlying sources of high wage gaps in over 500 labor,markets ac ross the United States. Compared with men, flexible and insecure employment conditions (e.g., joblessness, casualization, and immigration) are more im portant in fostering high wage gaps among women than are technology, trade, and industrial composition, the prevailing explanations of rising wage ine quality over time. Based on these gender differences, I reconsider the deba te on labor-market restructuring and inequality and discuss a new analytica l focus on differences in within-gender inequality.