The "End of Men" and Rise of Women in the High-Skilled Labor Market
by Guido Matias Cortes, Nir Jaimovich, Henry E. Siu
Abstract:
We document a new finding regarding changes in labor market outcomes for men and women in the US. Since 1980, conditional on being a college-educated man, the probability of working in a cognitive/high-wage occupation has fallen. This contrasts starkly with the experience for college-educated women: their probability of working in these occupations rose, despite a much larger increase in the supply of educated women relative to men. We consider these facts in light of a general neoclassical model of the labor market. One key channel capable of rationalizing these findings is a greater increase in the demand for female-oriented skills in cognitive/high-wage occupations relative to other occupations. Using occupation-level data, we find evidence that this relative increase in the demand for female skills is due to an increasing importance of social skills within such occupations. Evidence from both male and female wages is also indicative of an increase in the demand for social skills.
More at NBER.
From John R. Alford, Peter K Hateme, John R. Hibbing, Nicholas G. Martin, Lindon J. Eaves
Abstract:
Recent research has found a surprising degree of homogeneity in the personal political communication network of individuals but this work has focused largely on the tendency to sort into likeminded social, workplace, and residential political contexts. We extend this line of research into one of the most fundamental and consequential of political interactions—that between sexual mates. Using data on thousands of spouse pairs in the United States, we investigate the degree of concordance among mates on a variety of traits. Our findings show that physical and personality traits display only weakly positive and frequently insignificant correlations across spouses. Conversely, political attitudes display interspousal correlations that are among the strongest of all social and biometric traits. Further, it appears the political similarity of spouses derives in part from initial mate choice rather than persuasion and accommodation over the life of the relationship.
A new paper by Paola Giuliano
Social attitudes toward women vary significantly across societies. This
chapter reviews recent empirical research on various historical
determinants of contemporary differences in gender roles and gender gaps
across societies, and how these
differences are transmitted from parents to children and therefore
persist until today. We review work on the historical origin of
differences in female labor-force participation, fertility, education,
marriage arrangements, competitive attitudes, domestic
violence, and other forms of difference in gender norms. Most of the
research illustrates that differences in cultural norms regarding gender
roles emerge in response to specific historical situations, but tend to
persist even after the historical conditions
have changed. We also discuss the conditions under which gender norms
either tend to be stable or change more quickly.
