Occupational Segregation by Gender, Race and Ethnicity

Abstract Although research has established the persistence of occupational sex segregation and shown that race and ethnicity also segregate workers, we know almost nothing about the joint effects of sex, race and ethnicity on workers' distributions across occupations. This paper uses the 1990 census five-percent PUMS data to investigate the combined effects of workers' sex, race and ethnic ancestry on their distribution across occupations. After classifying 5.8 million workers into 52 race-ethnic-sex groups, we computed indices of occupational segregation for all 1,326 possible pairs within the 52 groups. We tested the hypothesis that sex and race interact in affecting the amount of occupational segregation between pairs by regressing their segregation indices on whether each pair was of the same sex, the same race, and both the same sex and the same race, net of nativity and educational differences between pairs. Our results confirmed that sharing the same sex and race reduced groups' occupational segreg...