How the 1963 Equal Pay Act and 1964 Civil Rights Act Shaped the Gender Gap in Pay

In the 1960s, the Equal Pay Act and the Civil Rights Act targeted the long-standing practice of labor-market discrimination against U.S. women. The paper presented in this Mannheim Applied Seminar evaluates the effects of this legislation using two complementary research designs, which exploit variation in the incidence of the legislation. The findings suggest that equal pay and fair employment legislation reduced discrimination against women and increased their wages during the 1960s. The authors find some evidence of modest reductions in women’s employment in jobs more affected by the legislation in the long run.