Pathwaysa magazine on poverty, inequality, and social policy Special Issue 2018 STATE OF THE UNION 2018 presents Studies in Social Inequality Series editors: David B. Grusky, Stanford University; Paula England, New York University Now Available STANFORD CENTER ON POVERTY Now Available AND INEQUALITY The Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality is a nonpartisan research center dedicated to monitoring trends in poverty and inequality, explaining what’s driving those trends, and developing science-based policy on poverty and inequality. The Center, a program of the Institute for Research in the Social Sciences at Stanford University, supports research by new and established scholars, trains the next generation of scholars and policy analysts, and disseminates the very best research on poverty and inequality. SUBSCRIBE NOW! Would you like to continue receiving a free copy of The Studies in Social Inequality Series offers cutting-edge scholarship on poverty and Pathways? Sign up for hard copy delivery or PDF inequality in its many forms. Submissions may take one of two forms: empirical or theoretical works of sustained exploration; or shorter essay-length books oriented toward notification at inequality.stanford.edu. a broad readership. We seek proposals based on quantitative analysis, mixed methods, or qualitative analysis. To submit manuscripts for consideration, please contact editor Marcela Maxfield at [email protected]. inequality.stanford.edu See our proposal submission guidelines: http://www.sup.org/authors/ gender inequality 3 Executive Summary David Grusky, Charles Varner, Marybeth Mattingly, and Stephanie Garlow 5 Gender Identification Aliya Saperstein 9 Education Erin M. Fahle and Sean F. Reardon 13 Health Mark Duggan and Valerie Scimeca 17 Employment Melissa S. Kearney and Katharine G. Abraham 20 Earnings Emmanuel Saez 23 Poverty H. Luke Shaefer, Marybeth Mattingly, and Kathryn Edin 26 Safety Net Linda M. Burton, Marybeth Mattingly, Juan Pedroza, and Whitney Welsh 30 Occupational Segregation Kim A. Weeden, Mary Newhart, and Dafna Gelbgiser 34 Discrimination David S. Pedulla 38 Workplace Sexual Harassment Amy Blackstone, Heather McLaughlin, and Christopher Uggen 42 Social Networks Adina D. Sterling 45 Policy Marianne Cooper and Shelley J. Correll EDITORIAL BOARD Sean Reardon, Stanford University Michelle Wilde Anderson, Stanford University Trudi Renwick, U.S. Census Bureau Pathways Linda Burton, Duke University Emmanuel Saez, University of California, Berkeley a magazine on poverty, inequality, and social policy David Card, University of California, Berkeley Richard Saller, Stanford University Dalton Conley, Princeton University Mario Luis Small, Harvard University Special Issue 2018 Shelley Correll, Stanford University C. Matthew Snipp, Stanford University Matthew Desmond, Princeton University Florencia Torche, Stanford University Mark Duggan, Stanford University SENIOR EDITORS Kim Weeden, Cornell University David Grusky Greg Duncan, University of California, Irvine William Julius Wilson, Harvard University Charles Varner Kathryn Edin, Princeton University Marybeth Mattingly Paula England, New York University Stephanie Garlow STANFORD CENTER ON POVERTY AND INEQUALITY Robert Frank, Cornell University Building 370, 450 Serra Mall RESEARCH SCHOLARS Janet Gornick, The Graduate Center, Stanford University Jonathan Fisher Nathaniel Johnson City University of New York Stanford, CA 94305-2029 Mark Granovetter, Stanford University Tel: 650-724-6912 ART DIRECTOR Robin Weiss Robert Hauser, National Research Council Email: [email protected] Michael Hout, New York University Website: inequality.stanford.edu COPY EDITOR Hilary Hoynes, University of California, Berkeley Elissa Rabellino Tomás Jiménez, Stanford University SUGGESTED CITATION FORMAT PROGRAM COORDINATOR Jon Krosnick, Stanford University Francesca Vescia Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality, ed. 2018. “State of Michèle Lamont, Harvard University the Union: The Poverty and Inequality Report.” Special issue, Glenn Loury, Brown University Pathways Magazine. Hazel Markus, Stanford University Douglas Massey, Princeton University Saperstein, Aliya. 2018. “Gender Identification.” In “State of Katherine Newman, University of Massachusetts the Union: The Poverty and Inequality Report,” ed. Stanford Joan Petersilia, Stanford University Center on Poverty and Inequality, special issue, Pathways Becky Pettit, University of Texas at Austin Magazine. Thomas Piketty, Paris School of Economics Sonya Rastogi Porter, U.S. Census Bureau © Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality, 2018. Woody Powell, Stanford University All rights reserved. the poverty and inequality report The Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality DAVID GRUSKY, CHARLES VARNER, MARYBETH MATTINGLY, AND STEPHANIE GARLOW he Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality is pleased • gaps that have long favored men, continue to favor men Tto present its fifth annual report examining the state of now, but are slowly declining in size (e.g., the growing the union. In this year’s report, we provide a comprehen- share of women in the top 1 percent of the earnings dis- sive assessment of gender inequality in eleven domains tribution), ranging from education to health, employment, earnings, • gaps that have long favored men, began to decline in size poverty, sexual harassment, networks, and more. The report many decades ago, with the rate of decline then gradu- concludes with a discussion of the most promising science- ally slowing or completely “stalling out” (e.g., the slowing based policies for reducing gender inequality at home and in rate of decline in the gender gap in labor earnings), the labor market. • gaps that have long favored men but have now come to There are of course all manner of excellent studies that favor women (e.g., the recent crossover in college gradu- address each of these eleven domains separately. We aim, by ation rates), contrast, to provide an integrated analysis that assembles evi- • gaps that have long favored women, continue to favor dence across domains and thus allows for a comprehensive women now, but are slowly declining in size (e.g., the assessment of where the country stands. Without this inte- declining female advantage in life expectancy), and grated analysis, it’s all too easy to default to a hodgepodge of piecemeal policies, each oriented to a single narrow-gauge • gaps that have long favored women, continue to favor problem in a single domain. By assembling a comprehensive women now, and show no signs of declining in size (e.g., report, we can identify generic problems that cut across many the consistent female advantage in fourth-grade reading types of inequality, thus making it possible—at least in prin- tests). ciple—to fashion a more coordinated policy response. This is a complicated constellation of results. If nothing else, It might at first blush seem unlikely that any cross-cutting it should dissuade us from treating gender inequality as a uni- conclusions could be reached on the basis of this report. The dimensional problem in which all gaps favor men or all gaps chapters instead reveal a rather complicated story in which are eroding. the speed, pattern, and even direction of change in the key “gender gaps” are all varying. The following types of gaps (and What accounts for such complications? It’s partly that gender trends therein) show up in the various chapters of this report: gaps are affected by social, cultural, and economic processes that don’t always operate uniformly on women and men. The • gaps that have long favored men, continue to favor men rise of industrial robots, for example, is a seemingly gender- now, and show no signs of declining much in size (e.g., neutral technological force that may nonetheless reduce the consistently lower poverty rates for men), PATHWAYS • The Poverty and Inequality Report • Gender 4 executive summary gender gap in employment insofar as male-dominated jobs occupations and other roles in accord with such stereotypical happen to be more susceptible to roboticization (pp. 17–19). views (i.e., the “discrimination mechanism”). The world is rife with such seemingly gender-neutral forces that nonetheless can have a gender-biased effect. It’s unlikely, The essentialist form is pernicious no matter which of these then, that the key gender gaps will move in lockstep when a two mechanisms, socialization or discrimination, is in play. different constellation of forces is affecting each of them. When gender inequality is rooted in gender-specific tastes or choices, we treat those choices as freely made, not as a Although these “gender-neutral” forces thus have a compli- product of socialization or an adaptation to a world in which cating effect on trends, it’s still possible to find traces among gender-atypical decisions (e.g., a woman deciding to become our results of a more directly gendered logic. The most obvi- a plumber) are discouraged or met with hostility. When inequal- ous example of such a logic rests on the distinction between ity is instead rooted in discrimination, we tend not to properly two forms of gender inequality, a “vertical form” pertaining to code it as discrimination, instead attributing the outcome to the gender gap in the amount of resources, and a “horizontal the operation of gender-specific tastes or choices. The upshot form” pertaining to the gender gap in the types of resources. is that horizontal forms of inequality persist because we see We can distinguish, for example, between (a) the vertical gap them