“The Narrowing Gender Wage Gap Among Faculty at Public Universities in the US”, 2023-08-28 ():
We study the conditional gender wage gap among faculty at public research universities in the U.S.
We begin by using a cross-sectional dataset from 2016 to replicate the long-standing finding in research that, conditional on rich controls, female faculty earn less than their male colleagues.
Next, we construct a data panel to track the evolution of the wage gap through 2021. We show that the gender wage gap is narrowing. It declined by more than 50% over the course of our data panel to the point where by 2021, it is no longer detectable at conventional levels of statistical-significance.
…We test directly for two potential mechanisms that could drive the declining gender wage gap. First, we test whether differences in promotion rates favoring women contribute to the narrowing gap and find no evidence to support this hypothesis. Second, we test for a gender gap in the likelihood of receiving an atypically large raise during the period covered by our data panel. We find that women are much more likely to receive atypically large raises, driven by a gender difference among faculty who remain at their original institutions 2016–52021.
…In the context of the renewed focus on gender equity at institutions throughout the U.S., including universities, it is of interest to understand the recent evolution of the gender wage gap. We study the evolution of the gap among tenured and tenure-track faculty at public universities 2016–52021. The baseline sample in 2016 includes just over 3,800 faculty at 40 public research universities. Using this baseline sample, we first reproduce the common finding from previous research that, conditional on rich controls, there is a non-negligible gender wage gap favoring men. We then use our data panel to show the gap narrowed by more than 50% from 2016 → 2021. The gap in 2021 is substantively small—at just over 1% of the average faculty member’s salary—and not statistically detectable.
A unique feature of our study is that we construct a true data panel tracking the same faculty over time and across institutions, which allows us to document how faculty who change universities influence the gender wage gap. Focusing on mobility within the US public sector—where we can observe post-move wages—we show the magnitude of the gender wage gap is not influenced by faculty movers. This is because (1) the gender gap in wage growth among mobile faculty is modest (although it does favor men) and (2) most faculty do not move. We also consider faculty mobility outside the US public sector. This portion of our analysis is more assumptive because we do not observe post-move wages for those who move to private and foreign universities. However, under reasonable assumptions, we find the gender wage gap in our sample, inclusive of these movers, has likely narrowed as well.