from 1980 through 1998. The researchers then minimized the impact of this finding by stating that from 1945 to 1998, the level of social inequality in the country did not change at all. This latter finding is small comfort for proponents of social inequality, as it implies that at some point between 1945 and 1980 social inequality decreased. In fact, the low point for social inequality in the United States was 1968 (Plotnick, Smolensky, Evenhouse, & Reilly, 1998).
Reid (1998) explained income equality based on gender within the context of comparative worth. Comparative worth posits the societal devaluation of certain occupations when the predominant jobholder groups in those occupations are women or members of population minority groups (Reid, 1998).
Morris and Western (1999) found that the median income level in the United States dropped from 1969 through 1999, and simultaneously income equality based on gender increased. The noted that the movements in these variable in the 1969-1999 period reversed trends that prevailed from 1929 through 1969 (Morris a& Western, 1999).
This section presents a description and explanation of the methods followed in this study. Issues addressed at (1) data, (2) hypotheses, (3) measurement, and (4) analysis.
This study relied on the use of data collected through the administrations of the GSS. Access to the GSS data was through two university Web sites รน The University of California, Berkeley (http://csa.berkeley.edu:7502/), and the University of California, San Diego (http://ssdc.ucsd.edu/gss). The study used data for three GSS variables, as follows:
1. Total Family Income [INCOME91]: The total family income variable measuring income by classifications initiated in 1991 was in the GSS administrations in 1991, 1993, 1994, 1996, and 1998. The number of valid cases for the INCOME91 variable in the cumulative data set covering these years was 8,551, of which 4,789 were female and 3...