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Title: Did a Personal Computer Revolution Reduce the Male-Female Wage Gap?

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2011

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Abstract: Models of technological revolutions imply that if production using personal computers (PCs) demands less physical and more cognitive skills than previous technologies, then its effect on relative demand for cognitive skills increases with the pre-PC relative supply of cognitive skills. Using variation across U.S. metropolitan areas, we first show that, before PCs, male-female wage gaps were increasing in the relative supply of cognitive skills, consistent with other evidence that women are cognitive intensive compared to men. Second, we show that the decline in the male-female wage gap in recent decades was not uniform across the U.S., as would be predicted by standard models of ongoing skill-biased technological change, but was larger in markets which had an initial advantage in PC adoption because of their high relative supply of cognitive skills, consistent with the PC revolution model. Our estimates are consistent with the diffusion of PCs being responsible for most of the decline in gender wage gaps between 1980 and 2000.

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Authors: Doms, Mark; Lewis, Ethan; Beaudry, Paul

Publisher: The Society of Labor Economists

Data Collections: IPUMS USA, IPUMS NHGIS

Topics: Gender, Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Other

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