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Title: Economic Self-Reliance and Gender Inequality Between US Men and Women, 1970-2010
Citation Type: Miscellaneous
Publication Year: 2018
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Abstract: Women have become increasingly economically self-reliant, depending more on paid employment for their positions in the income distribution than in the past. We know little about what happened to men, however, because most prior research restricts changes in self-reliance to be 'zero-sum,' with women's changes necessitating opposite and proportionate changes among men. We introduce a measure that allows asymmetric changes and also incorporates multiple population subgroups and income sources beyond couples' labor earnings. Using Current Population Survey data, we find that women's self-reliance increased dramatically, as expected, but men's declined only slightly. We decompose these trends into changes in family structure and redistribution, which increased and decreased self-reliance, respectively, for men and women, though more for women. Labor-market shifts, by contrast, were asymmetric and opposing, reducing men's self-reliance much less than they increased women's. Our approach opens opportunities for new insight into both gender inequality and the income attainment process.
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Authors: Bloome, Deirdre; Burk, Derek; Mccall, Leslie
Publisher: University of Michigan
Data Collections: IPUMS CPS
Topics: Gender, Labor Force and Occupational Structure
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