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

拟议的研究评估了联邦反歧视就业法对基于种族和性别的工资不平等的影响。 使用当前人口调查数据来衡量年度，州一级的工资差距，并使用各种政府来源来构建法律的覆盖范围，执法和解释的措施，这项分析将评估法律的影响种族和性别工资差距从1972年到2000年。 将采用汇总横截面、时间序列回归技术评估这些影响。 通过包括劳动力，经济和政治因素随着时间的推移和各州的变化的措施，分析将确定法律对种族/性别工资差距的独特影响。 目前的分层理论将种族/性别工资不平等与工人的属性、雇主的行为和工作场所的结构特征联系起来。 然而，法律的作用尚未得到系统的评价。 同样，现有的反歧视法的分析在很大程度上与分层理论无关，并且通常是非理论的。 因此，重要的理论问题，包括有关法律对不同种族/性别群体的影响和法律的不同组成部分的影响的问题，一直没有得到回答，很大程度上未理论化的现有的经验文献。 拟议的研究将借鉴法律的自由和批判理论，以便更全面地了解法律如何影响种族和性别工资不平等。 因此，拟议的研究的一个重要的智力价值是，它将综合这些单独的文献，并形成一个新的理论理解的法律和劳动力市场不平等之间的关系。 除了这些知识贡献之外，拟议研究的更广泛影响是：1）它将导致开发一套独特的数据，其中包括反歧视法的原始措施，供未来的研究人员使用; 2）它将为关于平权行动和其他反歧视措施的效用的公共辩论和政策决定提供信息。

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.