Budig and Misra win World Bank/Luxembourg Income Study Gender Research Award
A paper written by Michelle Budig and Joya Misra, associate professors of Sociology, has been chosen the winner of the first World Bank/Luxembourg Income Study Gender Research Award.
The prize is for their paper, “How Care Work Shapes Earnings in a Cross-National Perspective,” published by the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), a cross-national data archive and research institute. The study was commissioned in late 2007 by the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development.
The nominating pool for the award consisted of all papers added to LIS’ working paper series during 2008 that have a focus on gender and that include at least one middle-income country. A committee of four researchers selected the winner of the award.
The award includes a 750 euro cash prize, which Budig will accept when she presents the paper at the annual LIS Workshop in July. Budig and Misra will also have their names placed on a plaque at the LIS office.
Using data housed at the Luxembourg Income Study, their paper examines how much of the effects of care work employment on wages can be attributed to differences in worker characteristics such as educational attainment, age, gender, and nativity in 12 countries: Finland, Sweden, Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, France, Russia, Hungary, Canada, Mexico, Taiwan and the U.S.
Building upon past research Budig conducted with Paula England of Stanford University and Economic professor Nancy Folbre on wage penalties associated with care work employment, the pair conducted research and wrote the study between November 2007 and June 2008. During that time, Budig was a Humboldt Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Germany.
According to Budig, using the LIS data presents special challenges since researchers have to e-mail analytical programs to LIS, which are processed on its computers and results are e-mailed back to researchers. “So, two researchers, residing in Germany and Massachusetts, analyzed data housed in Luxembourg for this project, making this a cross-national project on multiple dimensions,” she said.
The study found that care workers are more likely to be women, highly educated, in professional jobs and in public sector employment, compared to the non-care workforces, cross-nationally, said Budig. “Despite their greater qualifications, the unadjusted earnings of care workers in most countries are about the same as non-care workers.”
That finding may be related to the fact that care workers are more likely to be in occupations and industries predominantly staffed by women, according to Budig and Misra.
They also found that care employment frequently, but not always, entails wage penalties, which means wages lower than would be expected, controlling for other factors. While this finding is not always true for some care occupations, such as physicians, care employment more consistently has negative effects on earnings for men. In countries where negative effects for care employment are also found among women, the size of these care penalties is often larger for women, compared to men.
Across countries, they found that wage penalties for care work tend to be larger among professional workers, among full-time workers, and among those working in the private sector. In contrast, wage bonuses are often associated with care work among those in the public sector and who are part-time workers and non-professional workers. Among women these types of bonuses are most consistently found in Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands, and among men these types of bonuses are found in Sweden, Germany and Canada.
Generally they found that medical occupations, particularly doctors and nurses, are associated with fewer wage penalties or larger wage bonuses. In contrast, educational occupations and domestic employment are more often associated with larger wage penalties, particularly for women.
By studying labor market policies, the study presented strong results indicating that where income inequality is greater and where the public sector is smaller, higher wage penalties are incurred for performing care work. On the other hand, where income inequality is low and the public sector is large, those in care occupations may even earn care bonuses, said Budig.
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March 12, 2009.
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