WHY ARE RACIAL AND ETHNIC WAGE GAPS LARGER FOR MEN THAN FOR WOMEN? EXPLORING THE ROLE OF SEGREGATION USING THE NEW WORKER-ESTABLISHMENT CHARACTERISTICS DATABASE Kimberly Bayard, Judith Hellerstein, David Neumark, and Kenneth Troske* student in economics at the University of Maryland. Hellerstein is Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland, and a Faculty Research Fellow of the NBER. Neumark is Professor of Economics at Michigan State University, and a Research Associate of the NBER. Troske is Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri. This research was supported by NSF grant SBR95-10876 through the NBER. The research in this paper was conducted while the authors were research associates with the Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Bureau of the Census. Research results and conclusions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily indicate concurrence by the Bureau of the Census or the Center for Economic Studies.AbstractWe examine the possible sources of the larger racial and ethnic wage gaps for men than for women in the U.S. Specifically, using a newly created employer-employee matched data set containing workers in essentially all occupations, industries, and regions, we examine whether these wage differences can be accounted for by differences between men and women in the patterns of racial and ethnic segregation within occupation, industry, establishments and occupation-establishment cells. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper to examine segregation by race and ethnicity at the level of establishment and job cell. Our results indicate that greater segregation between Hispanic men and white men than between Hispanic women and white women accounts for essentially all of the higher Hispanic-white wage gap for men. In addition, our estimates indicate that greater segregation between black and white men than between black and white women accounts for a sizable share ...
