Blau, Ferber and Winkler (1998) in their statistical exercise suggest a great many concepts in Chapter Eight which is titled "Recent Developments in the Labor Market: Their Impact on Women and Men." The authors divide the chapter into five broad sections:
* Changing Labor Dynamics: Restructuring and Job Loss
* The Rise of the Nonstandard Work Force
* The Changing Face of Labor Unions
Following a summary overview of the chapter, each of those headings will be used to organize the structure of this analysis.
The authors admit that the decline in the gender gap separating male and female wages and salaries has continued. However, the trend is to a flattening of wage increases, and what the authors call a "return to skill" which the authors define as "the prices that the labor market sets for various worker qualifications. The reasons for this increase in demand are not fully understood, but most studies point to the technological change and increasing international competition, both of which are believed to have had a negative effect on the relative demand for less skilled workers" (p. 235).
Although never fully committing to a proposition that poor education equals lower rank on the economic ladder, the authors do state "Among women, this reflects negligible increases in participation rates for those with less than four years of high school in comparison to substantial increases for those with higher levels of education"(p. 243).
Much the same approach is taken in the remaining sections of this chapter. The approach, specifically, is to state a concept, offer data to support that concept, refute that concept, end up agreeing with that concept. For example, consider this example.
State a concept: "Recent articles in the popular press have pointed to the consequences of these changes in the form of huge corporate layoffs (p. 243, Second Paragraph first sentence.
Offer Data to Support the Co...