Researcher ORCID Identifier

0000-0002-8309-3745

Graduation Year

2022

Document Type

Campus Only Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Economics

Reader 1

Roberto Pedace

Reader 2

Albert Dorsey

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Rights Information

© 2021 Carly A Hanna

Abstract

I explore the impact of Black and White women’s domestic situation, as defined by their marital status and childbearing, on their approximate wage income. I approach this issue with both economic, historical, and sociological literature to address the current situation for women with a nuanced and perspective that captures potential drivers behind results. I also run two ordinary least squares regression with age and education as controls in the first, adding occupation and industry in the second, to determine whether women’s labor history has lasting effects on how women’s domestic situation impacts earnings. In my regressions I find that marriage is correlated with higher wages for both Black and White women at similar levels, and that childbearing is correlated with lower wages for Black and White women at similar levels, though White women have a statistically significant greater magnitude of negative impact in the second regressions. I then ran a Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition to tease out the drivers in differences between how the regression variables impact Black and White women’s approximate wages. My findings demonstrate that the level of domestic situation’s impact on approximate wages is similar for Black and White women, but the general demographic characteristics of Black and White women, and the market returns to these characteristics explain the wage differential almost equally.

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