【主题】Decomposing Trends in the Gender Gap for Highly Educated Workers

【主讲人】 钟灵助理教授（长江商学院）

【主持人】邓兰芳副教授

【时间】2025年10月10日（周五）14:30-16:00

【地点】文二栋536会议室

【摘要】This paper examines the gender gap in log earnings among full-time, college-educated workers born between 1931 and 1984. Using data from the National Survey of College Graduates and other sources, we decompose the gender earnings gap across birth cohorts into three components: (i) gender differences in the relative returns to undergraduate and graduate fields, (ii) gender-specific trends in undergraduate field, graduate degree attainment, and graduate field, and (iii) a cohort-specific “residual component” that shifts the gender gap uniformly across all college graduates. We have three main findings. First, when holding the relative returns to fields constant, changes in fields of study contribute 0.128 to the decline in the gender gap. However, this decline is partially offset by cohort trends in the relative returns to specific fields that favored men over women, reducing the contribution of field-of-study changes to the decline to 0.055. Second, gender differences in the relative returns to undergraduate and graduate fields of study contribute to the earnings gap, but they play a limited role in explaining its decline over time. Third, much of the convergence in earnings between the 1931 and 1950 cohorts is due to a declining “residual component.” The residual component remains stable for cohorts born between 1951 and the late 1970s, after which it resumes its decline.

【主讲人简介】钟灵，耶鲁大学经济学博士。现任长江商学院经济学助理教授，长江商学院MBA及高层管理教育项目《人力资源管理》课程教授。研究的主要方向包括人力经济学、教育经济学、公共经济学和中国经济等。主要学术成果发表于Journal of Labor Economics、Labor Economics、哈佛商业评论、PLOS ONE、IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology、Paleobiology、《极地研究》等学术期刊，并出版教材《人力资源管理实战》。