WASHINGTON, June 4 (UPI) -- The gap between men's and women's wages increases with higher earnings, according to data released by the U.S. Census Bureau Wednesday. And, blacks earn two-thirds of what whites earn on average.
The report was based on data collected in the 2000 Census about earnings in 1999. It focuses on incomes for full-time workers in more than 500 occupations.
"There's a much larger gap at the upper end of the earnings distribution than at lower end," said economist Dan Weinberg. "Another way to say it is the best-paid men make a lot more than the best-paid women, whereas the worst-paid men make a little more than the worst-paid women." Weinberg is the chief of the Housing and Household Economic and Statistics Division at the Census Bureau, and the author of the report.
The average annual income in 1999 was $43,000. Whites earned an average of $46,000, while blacks earned $33,000. Asians on average earned slightly more than whites -- $47,000, and the average wage for Hispanics was the lowest of any racial group -- $31,000.
The report also measured median incomes -- the "middle" incomes, of people who earn more than 50 percent of the population and less than the other 50 percent. While the median income for all Americans is $33,000, the average is much higher because of the high earnings of the top 10 percent of earners. The top 10 percent earned $75,000 or more in 1999, and the top 1 percent earned $220,000 or more.
The report also showed that the average income for women was $33,000, while for men it was $50,000. Median incomes were lower for both men and women, at $38,000 and $28,000, respectively. Both groups earned about $10,000 more in 1999 than in 1989.
The most recent data from the Census Bureau show that the gap between median incomes for men and women has decreased over time. Women's median incomes in 2002 were 77 percent of men's, while they were only 72 percent of men's incomes in 1999.
But the data also showed that the gap between men and women's earnings in 1999 increased with higher incomes. For example, the difference between men and women's earnings as dishwashers differed by only $2,000. But male physicians and surgeons earned a median income of $140,000 in 1999 while their female counterparts earned $88,000.
According to Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women, women in higher-wage jobs see a greater disparity partly because of incremental pay increases or raises based on a percentage of current earnings.
"When women are paid less, they tend to get less at the next job and the next job after that," Gandy said. "That becomes more and more apparent the higher women climb up the corporate ladder."
Figuring in factors such as experience and education accounts for some of the difference between men's and women's wages, but discrimination still plays a role, Gandy said. "There's still a significant portion of the gap that is not attributable to any identifiable factor and is simply women being paid lower than men by employers.
"You see examples of a real resistance to increasing women's wages," Gandy said. Salaries increased in fields dominated by men, such as the technology sector, when there were shortages in the number of workers. But the same did not happen in women-dominated fields, such as nursing, when there were employee shortages.
The Census report states that several factors -- such as location, educational opportunities, marriage, the presence of unions and work history -- help explain the difference between median incomes for men and women. The report also cited a study by the General Accounting Office, which evaluates government spending, that said work patterns are key to the gender wage gap.
Women have fewer years of work experience, work fewer hours, are less likely to work full-time and leave the work force for longer periods of time than men, according to the GAO study. But even factoring in all these variables could not account for all of the difference between men's and women's wages, according to the GAO study.
As for income disparity among racial groups, several factors are to blame, said economist Lee Price, research director for the Economic Policy Institute. The institute is a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.
Discrimination and different education levels account for some of the disparity. The level of education for blacks and Hispanics is lower than it is for whites and Asians at the median, he said.
Also, where different racial groups are concentrated and the types of jobs available to them there add to the disparity, Price said. For example, blacks are concentrated in parts of the South, which also tends to have lower-paying jobs.
"To the extent that there's discrimination, redressing that discrimination that affects blacks and Hispanics" is one way to help decrease the disparity, Price said.
The report also showed that average incomes increase with higher levels of education. A person with a high-school diploma earned on average $33,000, or $5,000 more than a person who had not graduated from high school. Earners with bachelor's degrees or higher degrees earned an average of $65,000 in 1999.
The report classified earnings by occupation as well. According to the data, the highest-paid occupations were physician and surgeon with a median income of $120,000. Dentist, podiatrist, lawyer and petroleum engineer also made the list of top-paid jobs, all with median incomes over $80,000.
Of the lowest-paid jobs, dishwasher topped the list with a median income of $13,000. Other low-paying jobs included child care worker, housekeeper, cafeteria counter attendant and teacher assistant, all of which earned a median income of $15,000 or less.
The data for the study were obtained through questions on the long-form census questionnaire, sent to 19 million households, or one in every six, according to Weinberg. It asked the occupation of the respondent as well as his or her earnings from all sources. These responses were then extrapolated to the entire population.
Though the Census Bureau has done more recent research on incomes and income distribution, the data contained in the 2000 Census gave researchers an opportunity to look more deeply into employment and income trends.
"This is the latest available data with this amount of detail," Weinberg said. "This is the last report where you can identify 505 occupations with enough detail to say something about them." The Census Bureau's annual report on incomes does not factor in characteristics such as education, sex and age and only evaluates 78,000 households a year, Weinberg said.
