Gender Pay Gap Has Almost Nothing To Do With Discrimination, Says Top Economist

Article here. Excerpt:

'The 17 percent gender pay gap is almost entirely due to age, marriage and the different hours worked by men and women, according to a top economist at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) annual report on the “Highlights of Women’s Earnings” shows women’s in full-time work median earnings were 83 percent those of men.

The National Committee on Pay Equity claims this pay-gap emerges “in part because many women and people of color are still segregated into a few low-paying occupations.”

But AEI economist Mark Perry says one reason the wage-gap appears is that men work more hours than women. More than quarter of men in full-time work clocked in 41 or more hours per week in 2014, whereas the same could be said for only 14.8 percent of women. On the more extreme end, men were two and a half times more likely than women to work 60 hour weeks.'