The Narrowing and Often Disappearing Pay Gap

From today's NYTimes Business Section article "For Women, a Slow Narrowing of the Pay Gap":

"In 1979, women working full time made only 63 percent as much pay as men, according to data compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Now working women make 81 percent as much as men (see chart above). What is the reason for the disparity? Discrimination? Choices that women and men have made? That is not entirely clear."

Tables 1 and 4 of the original BLS report used by the NY Times helps to answer some of the questions posed above:

1. Controlling for marital status, and looking only at those workers who have "never married," the BLS reports that women earned 93.8% of what men earned in 2006 for full-time workers and 98.6% for part-time workers.

2. For workers in the 25-34 year old category, female earnings are 88.2% of male earnings.

A 2005 NBER study also helps answer the NY Times' questions:

"There is no gender gap in wages among men and women with similar family roles. Comparing the wage gap between women and men ages 35-43 who have never married and never had a child, we find a small observed gap in favor of women, which becomes insignificant after accounting for differences in skills and job and workplace characteristics."