Brandon Magliocco & Dr. David Schaffer  Economics  Univ. of Wisconsin-Eau Claire Changing Wage Rates Among Men and Women in the U.S. by Age Cohort and Education: We thank the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs for supporting this research, and Learning & Technology Services for printing this poster. Figures 1-6 portray the differences between male and female birth- year cohorts given levels of education. We have identified two classes of education levels for this analysis. The lower classification of education is individuals who have not obtained a bachelors degree, or whom have earned less than 14 years of formal education. The upper education classification is for those men and women who have earned a bachelors degree or greater in formal education, which includes any graduate level degree. Men who have not earned a bachelors degree have real hourly wage rates that fluctuate from $15 an hour to $20 an hour in the peaks of their careers, as shown in Figure 1. In contrast however, men with a bachelors degree or greater experience enormous growth in wage rates during the earliest years of employment and stabilize between $25 to $30 per hour. The chronological order of these birth-year cohorts is also of interest, especially in comparison to the chronological order of the women’s birth-year cohorts. In Figures 1 and 2, the wages of the male cohorts fluctuate and do not necessarily follow a chronological order. The wages of male birth-year cohorts often cross and do not exhibit any logical sequence, which implies that men’s wage rates have not consistently increased over time with or without a bachelors degree. Women however have experienced growth in their real hourly wages over time. Figure 3 portrays the growth in real hourly wage rates of women with less than a bachelors degree. It is clear that the order of these birth-year cohorts is chronological. Each cohort increases by a small amount in real hourly wage rates. However, in contrast to Figure 4, the wages of less educated women experienced only small increases between cohorts. Women in the higher education classification (Figure 4) also exhibited chronological growth in real hourly wages, however the quantity of the increases were larger than in Figure 3. This implies that in more recent years, there are larger returns to a bachelors degree and beyond for women. Although women’s real hourly wage rates have been growing the gender gap between wages has not yet closed. Figures 5 and 6 portray the realities of the gender wage gap. In Figure 5, we have produced a graph to display the difference in wages between the upper education classifications of men and women. The gap between men and women’s real wage rates increase with age. At age 40 there is a $5.40 gap between the highest earning female cohort and the lowest earning male cohort; and at age 50 there is a $6.84 gap. Consequently, a significant disparity in real wage rates still prevails. Figure 6 exhibits another comparison. In this graph we have plotted wages for both more educated women and less educated men to display the overlap of real hourly wage rates. Women in the higher education classification are clearly earning very similar real wages as compared to men in the lower education classification. Similar to Figures 1-4, these graphs portray the changes in the real wage rates of birth year cohorts. There are two critical differences however in Figures 7 and 8. These wage rates are measured in mean wages as opposed to median wages. Additionally, these models do not adjust for education. However, significant similarities prevail. The wages of the female birth-year cohorts once again exhibit chronological growth while the wages of the male cohorts have no chronological order. Given that men do not appear to be experiencing growth in wages and women clearly are, the gap seems to be narrowing, although equality in real wage rates has not been reached. Figure 9 describes the real hourly wage rates among married men and women between the ages of Recent literature in the field of economics claims that the gender wage gap is closing between individuals just entering the work-force. This appears to be true using the trendlines. The wage gap has decreased from roughly $6.00 (in 1971) down to about $1.50 (in 2010). However, using the plotted data, it appears that the wage gap is closer to the $2.00 to $3.00 range over the most recent 10 years. Figure 10 introduces employment levels. It shows the changes in both wages and employment over time for 4 different birth-year cohorts. Each cohort has a corresponding arrow to show the direction of the change over time and age. This graph is essentially a supply and demand graph showing us the equilibria for different times and ages. The two earliest birth-year cohorts suggest a decrease in labor supply given that employment levels decrease as wage rates increase. In contrast, the newest birth- year cohorts seem to suggest an increase in labor demand. Wage rates for the newest birth-year cohorts begin at under $10 per hour but increase to approximately $25 per hour. We developed Figure 11 in order to show wage comparisons across gender, year and education levels. This graph does not incorporate cohort analysis as with many of the previous ones. We have plotted the average real hourly wage rates for each gender during 5 different time periods. There are a number of significant results: (1) men’s wages are higher in each education category than women’s, (2) the wage gap caused by education is growing larger for men and women, (3) growth in the wages is much higher with the highest levels of education, and (4) wages for those with only a high school degree have remained constant or fallen over this time period. In Figure 12 we focus on the overall change over time in wage rates for both men and women. Men experience a general decline in wages until 1994 and than a partial recovery until Women however experience very few reductions in wage rates leading to a much larger increase in wages between 1971 and Although it appears as if women are doing better than men, this only explains that women’s wages have improved over time more than men’s and does not describe the wage gap. Introduction The purpose of our study is to analyze the differences in real hourly wage rates among men and women in the United States. We focus our attention on birth-year, education levels and age. The data are from 40 years of the Current Population Surveys (CPS) of the U.S. Census Bureau from 1971 to This provides us with more than 3 million observations on individuals and families. The arrows indicate the direction of change over time and age