Women and Minorities in Federal Government Agencies: Examining New Evidence from Panel Data
Women and Minorities in Federal Government Agencies: Examining New Evidence from Panel Data
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联邦政府机构中的妇女和少数族裔：检验面板数据中的新证据
DOI：
10.2307/976730
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发表时间：
1994
影响因子：
8.3
通讯作者：
J. Kellough
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Christopher M. Cornwell;J. Kellough
在过去20年中，妇女和少数种族/族裔在公共工作队伍中的就业人数有了相当大的增长，预测表明，这种增长预计将持续到不久的将来（Johnston等人，1988年）。总的来说，联邦公务员制度已经显著地反映了这个国家的人口。妇女占联邦文职人员总数的43%以上，非洲裔美国人占16.6%，西班牙裔美国人占5.4%（美国人事管理办公室，1990年）。然而，这种程度的一体化未能覆盖到公共官僚机构的所有部门。妇女和少数民族仍然集中在较低层次的工作岗位上。最近非常注意这个问题和如何确保在公务员制度中较高职等享有平等机会；(1)然而，各联邦机构在女性和少数族裔所占工作的总体百分比以及少数族裔和女性就业的增长率方面存在相当大的差异。表1和表2说明了这些差异。表1和表2分别报告了1988年在30个选定机构中妇女、非洲裔美国人和西班牙裔美国人的就业份额，以及1982-1988年期间每个群体的就业份额的增长百分比。（“机构”一词既指部门，也指独立机构。）本文讨论的实证问题是，女性和少数族裔就业份额的机构间差异以及份额变化在多大程度上与机构内的职业分布以及机构的人口和组织特征有系统的关系。这种分析的一个显著特点是使用面板数据，即汇集的横截面/时间序列（见第266页的灰框）。以前的实证工作几乎完全依赖于横截面计量经济学方法。面板数据的可用性允许控制时间的流逝和未观察到的定常代理特征，这些特征可能与随后回归中的解释变量相关。这种控制在标准的横截面分析中是不可能的，因此，从这种模型中估计的系数可能不一致。机构特点和妇女和少数民族的就业在研究按性别、种族和族裔界线的政府就业一体化的决定因素时，应注意各机构的职业分布情况。传统上，妇女和少数民族在文职职位上的代表人数过多，而在专业、行政和技术工作类别上的代表人数不足（Saltzstein, 1986; Mladenka, 1989; Kellough, 1990； Kellough和Elliott， 1992）。因此，可以预期文职职位的百分比对妇女和少数民族就业的估计影响将是积极的。同样，由于非裔美国人和西班牙裔美国人在蓝领岗位上的比例过高，一个机构中蓝领岗位的普遍程度应该与非裔美国人和西班牙裔美国人的就业呈正相关。相比之下，女性和少数族裔的就业情况应与机构中专业、行政和技术职业的百分比成反比。然而，除了职业差异之外，联邦机构在规模或总就业人数方面也存在巨大差异。Grabosky和Rosenbloom（1975）提供了早期证据，证明少数族裔就业份额与机构规模负相关。对这种关系的一种解释是，在大型机构中，每增加一名少数族裔（或女性）雇员，对多样性的贡献就会变小；这些机构必须雇用更多的少数民族，以达到与较小机构相同的种族/族裔组成。…
The employment of women and racial/ethnic minorities in the public work force has grown considerably in the past 20 years, and projections have suggested that such growth can be expected to continue into the immediate future (Johnston et al., 1988). Already, die federal civil service has, in the aggregate, become remarkably reflective of the nation's population. Women comprise more than 43 percent of the total federal civilian work force while African Americans hold 16.6 percent of those positions, and Hispanic representation stands at 5.4 percent (U.S. Office of Personnel Management, 1990a). This level of integration has, however, failed to reach all segments of the public bureaucracy. Women and minorities remain concentrated in lower-echelon jobs. Much attention has focused recently on that issue and on ways to ensure that equal opportunity reaches the higher grades in the public service;(1) yet, there is considerable variation across federal agencies in the overall percentage of jobs held by women and minorities and the rate of growth of minority and female employment. These differences are illustrated in Tables 1 and 2, which report employment shares for women, African Americans, and Hispanics in 30 selected agencies for the year 1988, and the percentage increase in employment shares for each group from 1982-1988, respectively. (The term "agency" is used to refer to departments as well as independent agencies.) [TABULAR DATA OMITTED] The empirical issue addressed in this article is the extent to which interagency differences in female and minority employment shares, as well as share changes, are systematically related to the distribution of occupations within an agency and an agency's demographic and organizational characteristics. A distinctive feature of this analysis is the use of panel data, a pooled cross-section/time-series see grey box on page 266.) Previous empirical work has relied amost exclusively on crosssectional econometric approaches. The availability of panel data allows for control of the passage of time and of unobserved time-invariant agency characteristics that may be correlated with explanatory variables in subsequent regressions. Such control is not possible in standard cross-sectional analysis, and as a result, coefficient estimates from such models may be inconsistent. Agency Characteristics and the Employment of Women and Minorities In any study of determinants of government employment integration along gender, racial, and ethnic lines, attention should be directed to the distribution of occupations across agencies. Traditionally, women and minorities have been over-represented in clerical positions and under-represented in professional, administrative, and technical job categories (Saltzstein, 1986; Mladenka, 1989; Kellough, 1990; and Kellough and Elliott, 1992). As a result, it can be expected that the estimated effect of the percentage of clerical positions on the employment of women and minorities will be positive. Similarly, because of the over-representation of African-American and Hispanic employees in blue-collar positions, the prevalence of blue-collar positions in an agency should be positively associated with African-American and Hispanic employment. By contrast, female and minority employment should vary inversely with the percentage of professional, administrative, and technical occupations in an agency. Apart from occupational variation, however, federal agencies also differ dramatically in terms of their size or total employment. Grabosky and Rosenbloom (1975) provided early evidence that minority employment shares are negatively related to agency size. One explanation for this relationship is that each additional minority (or female) hire makes a smaller contribution toward diversity in large agencies; such agencies must employ a larger number of minorities to achieve the same racial/ethnic composition as smaller agencies. …