Maternity Leave and the Gender Wage Gap: An Analysis of New Jersey Family Leave Insurance, Accessible Data
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Figure 1: Shares of Firms covered by the FLI across counties in New Jersey, 2014. The figure shows the share of firms covered under the Family Leave Insurance (FLI) program. Those shares are constructed by aggregating the information from the New Jersey DoL employer database at the county-level. The firm count by county is constructed using the County Business Patterns series. The figure highlights the heterogeneity in the distribution of firms subject to the FLI legislation across counties; we exploit this heterogeneity in the empirical analysis.
| Probability Range | Counties |
|---|---|
| (0.62, 1] | Cumberland, Warren, Hunterdon, Gloucester, Atlantic |
| (0.56, 0.62] | Somerset, Middlesex, Salem, Camden, Burlington, Union |
| (0.52, 0.56] | Hudson, Passaic, Monmouth, Essex |
| [0.4, 0.52] | Morris, Mercer, Sussex, Bergen, Ocean, Cape May |
Figure 2: Gender Wage Gap in New Jersey, 1996-2014. The figure shows the evolution of the gender wage gap in the state of New Jersey since 1996. Each dot indicates the percentage difference in pay between men and women per dollar of compensation -- for example, a gender wage gap of -0.38 in 1996 implies that women were paid 38 cents less than men per dollar of pay in 1996. The shaded area represents the 95 percent confidence interval around the point estimates. The gender differences in earnings in New Jersey have decreased over time: The trend toward equality accelerated after 2008, reaching a wage gap of 27% by the end of the period.
Figure 3: Comparison of Gender Wage Gap, New Jersey and neighboring States, 2000-2014. This figure compares the evolution of the gender wage gaps across states. The analysis focuses on New Jersey and its neighboring states, Delaware, New York, and Pennsylvania. Those states have also experienced a declining gap since the 2000s. The change, however, occurred at a faster pace in New Jersey, which was lagging behind Delaware, New York, and Pennsylvania at the beginning of the period; by 2014, New Jersey caught up with Pennsylvania and reduced the gap with Delaware and New York.
Figure 4: Gender Wage Gap by age-cohort, New Jersey, 1996-2014. This figure shows the evolution of the gender wage gap by age-cohort group. Women aged 14 to 24 in 1996 experience a large reduction in the wage gap; this reduction moderates around the mid/late 2000s. A similar reversal of trend is noticed for women aged 25 to 34 in 1996. Women aged 35 to 54 in 1996, instead, experience a reduction in the pay differences compared to men over the entire time period, but no significant change in the trend is observed after the late 2000s. This figure suggests that the faster tightening of the wage gap around the mid-2000s documented in figure 2 stems from younger cohorts.