Doctoral Dissertation Research: Interrupting Inequality: The Effect of Antidiscrimination Law on Race/Gender Wage Gaps

Vanderbilt University, Nashville TN

Investigators

Abstract

The proposed research assesses the effects of federal antidiscrimination employment law on race- and gender-based wage inequality. Using Current Population Survey data to measure annual, state-level wage gaps and using a variety of governmental sources to construct measures of the law's coverage, enforcement, and interpretation, this analysis will evaluate the law's impact on race and gender wage gaps from 1972 through 2000. Pooled cross-sectional, time series regression techniques will be utilized to assess these effects. By including measures of variation in labor force, economic, and political factors over time and across states, the analysis will identify the unique effect of the law on race/gender wage gaps. Current stratification theory links race/gender wage inequality to workers' attributes, employers' behaviors, and structural characteristics of the workplace. The role of the law, however, has not been systematically evaluated. Similarly, existing analyses of antidiscrimination law are largely unconnected from stratification theory and are typically atheoretical. As a result important theoretical questions-including questions concerning the impact of the law on different race/gender groups and the impact of different components of the law-have been unanswered and largely untheorized by the existing empirical literature. The proposed study will draw on liberal and critical theories of the law in order to develop a more complete understanding of how the law impacts race and gender wage inequality. Thus, an important intellectual merit of the proposed research is that it will synthesize these separate literatures and forge a new theoretical understanding of the relationship between the law and labor market inequality. In addition to these intellectual contributions, the broader impacts of the proposed research are that 1) it will lead to the development of a unique data set with original measures of antidiscrimination law for use by future researchers and 2) it will inform public debates and policy decisions about the utility of affirmative action and other antidiscrimination measures.