This application proposes a program of research on the relationship between aging and gender differences in occupational achievement and a program of training in the areas of mathematics, statistics, economics, and econometrics. The purpose of the research proposed is to study the process by which gender differences in occupational achievement grow with age during the adult years. The research will focus on gender differences in labor market behavior that produce widening gender differences in occupational prestige and earnings over the life course. The research will study gender differences in career processes by analyzing (1) gender differences in the process of job transition and (2) gender differences in earnings growth. Two projects involving analyses of two different data sets are proposed. The first project will study the process of job change and the ways in which the rewards accruing to the two sexes from job shifts differ. Event history data will be used to analyze (1) the occurrence of job shifts and (2) changes in prestige resulting from job shifts. The second project will analyze gender differences in earnings growth with age. Two types of analyses will be carried out. First, cross-sectional data on earnings and retrospective data on labor market behavior will be used to study the cumulative effect of gender differences in labor market behavior on gender differences in earnings. Second, longitudinal data will be used to analyze changes in the earnings of the two sexes over a two-and-a-half-year period. An important feature of all the analyses is that they will consider the effects of both individual and job characteristics.
