The Gender Pay Gap In Uber Driving And Tesco Stores And Warehouses
Different jobs and different ways of doing jobs lead to different levels of pay -- a fact that's often conveniently ignored when complaining about a pay gap between men and women.
Uber driving is a great thing to look at on the "gender pay gap," because the app doesn't exactly pick drivers by penis or vagina.
When you use the app, you just see a little automatic notification that "Carlos" in his Nissan Sentra is coming to pick you up -- and he gets chosen by how close he is to you, not whether there's a set of balls resting on the driver's seat.
On Freakonomics, Steven Dubner and Greg Rosalesky ask the question, "What Can Uber Teach Us About the Gender Pay Gap?"
They write:
This is a special episode occasioned by the fact that we got our hands on a brand-new research paper that we thought was so interesting, and important, that you'd want to be among the first people to know about it. It's called "The Gender Earnings Gap in the Gig Economy: Evidence From Over a Million Rideshare Drivers." (You can read the paper in its entirety at the bottom of this page.)Those "rideshare" drivers, as you may have guessed, are Uber drivers. The paper was written by five economists -- two who are employed by Uber; two Stanford professors; and one researcher who's been on Freakonomics Radio several times: John List, who's chairman of the University of Chicago economics department, and he moonlights as head of the ubernomics team at Uber.
List is joined on the podcast by two of the other economists who worked on the paper: Rebecca Diamond, from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and Jonathan Hall, who leads the public policy and economics team at Uber.
So, to sum up the findings -- why men earn more -- there are a few factors. First, there's when and where drivers drive and which routes drivers focus on:
LIST: So after reaching the dead end of discrimination doesn't seem to be a determinant, we then decided to ask, Well, what about where and when? So what I'm thinking about here is time of day, day of week, and where in Chicago they actually drive. And here, we had some success. So what we find is that after you explore the where's and when's, we find that we can explain roughly 20 percent of the gender pay gap by choices over where to drive and when to drive.DIAMOND: And an important contributor to the gap is particularly where the rides started. So different neighborhoods are going to differ in the types of rides that you're going to get, and also potentially the frequency of rides you're going to get called for. So men and women tend to target different neighborhoods of where they're driving, and men are targeting more lucrative pay areas than women.
DUBNER : And does that have to do with, like, at 3:00 in the morning on Saturday, and I want to go out to where all the bars are, and there might be a surge? Or is it more -- I don't know, early-morning airport trips? Can you characterize the nature of those most lucrative trips, that men seem to be doing a little better at?
LIST: So what is more important than when you drive, is exactly which trips or routes do you tend to focus on. So one particularly salient example here is that airport trips tend to be the most profitable trips on the Uber platform. So what you have is that men tend to complete more airport trips than women complete.
There's level of experience:
LIST: No, that's right. When you look at experience, really men are more experienced than women because of two primary reasons. One, women drop off the platform more often than men. But, two, even for those who are on the platform for the same amount of time, since the average man drives about 50 percent more trips per week than the average woman, you still have the experience effect for those who have been on the platform the same number of months.DIAMOND: So at any given day or time, the men driving for Uber have a higher level of experience under their belt than women, and that plays an important role in compensation.
HALL: And that explains about 30 percent of the pay gap that we measure.
And then there's how men tend to drive faster than women:
LIST: That's right. So after we account for experience now we're left scratching our heads. So, we're thinking, Well, we've tried discrimination. We've done where, when. We've done experience. What possibly could it be? And then what we notice in the data is that men are actually completing more trips per hour than women. So this is sort of a eureka moment.DUBNER (FROM LIST): They're driving faster, aren't they?
HALL: Yeah. So the third factor, which explains the remaining 50 percent of the gap, is speed.
DIAMOND: So men happen to just drive a little bit faster, and because driving a little bit faster gets you to finish your trips that much quicker, and get on to the next trip, you can fit more trips in an hour, and you end up with a higher amount of pay.
DUBNER: Now how did these Uber driver data for male/female speed compare to male/female driver speed generally? Do we know for a fact that men generally drive faster than women?
LIST: Yeah, what you find is that in the general population men actually drive faster than women.
DUBNER: Okay, so male Uber drivers drive faster than female Uber drivers, and therefore that helps them make more money. Is that, however, more dangerous, the faster driving?
DIAMOND: So the gap is small -- men drive about 2 percent faster than women. So it doesn't suggest that that's leading to big differences in risk.
Women, on the other hand, get higher tips -- 10 to 20 percent more -- though they've just started compiling those data. However, earnings go down overall due to tipping, it seems, because there's an increased supply of drivers (perhaps thinking that they can make more money).
All in all, when people talk about erasing the gender pay gap, they often don't take into account the reasons some are paid more. For example, there's a Tesco case now where they say that the largely female store employees are paid less than the largely male warehouse workers.
Lawyers say female shopfloor workers earn up to £3 an hour less than male warehouse staff
Well, note that there's a difference. It's not less pay for the same work -- it's different work. Store floor versus warehouse floor. I'm just throwing out a guess here, yes, but which do you think is easier?
In asking for pay parity, people should check and see whether they're asking for pay parity for the same work or charity from businesses for half of the population.
And on one related note, women need to do what they tend not to do -- negotiate for higher salaries and better benefits instead of just taking what they're offered and then complaining that they are paid less.
If they are paid less because male employees negotiated for more than they were offered and they did not, that isn't discrimination; it's capitalism.
Freakanomics via @CHSommers; Tesco via @jowilliams293
Second day in a row where Amy's main blog post is based on a link I previously posted :)
Snoopy at February 7, 2018 6:36 AM
Great that you did, Snoopy. I didn't see it, or I would have credited you. Yesterday was deadline day, and I was feeling sick all day and felt too bad to blog last night (in any sort of worthwhile way!). Saw this via a Christina Hoff Sommers tweet this morning (the Uber link), and then saw Joanna Williams' tweet about Tesco.
Amy Alkon at February 7, 2018 6:41 AM
Little doubt that the warehouse work is physically more demanding labor. There's also the risk. I haven't found any later data, but in 2004 there were 21 fatalities and 14,620 injuries reported due to warehouse work. In a free market, you generally have to pay more to get people to do jobs that contain injury risk.
Cousin Dave at February 7, 2018 7:04 AM
> based on a link I
> previously posted :)
Golly! You're that very special kind of racist who sees the future! ! :) :) :) ♥ ♥ :)
Crid at February 7, 2018 7:08 AM
Ok, after controlling for experience, routes, etc, what was the earnings per mile driven? With that much data available, there should be enough to do that and get results that should stand up to scrutiny.
I R A Darth Aggie at February 7, 2018 8:13 AM
> what was the earnings per mile driven?
the problem with that is that sadly, Uber economists are famous for lying and fudging, because those numbers are competitive trade secrets, could cause them to get regulated, and could even cause them to get unionized (current Seattle case)
It's why I take this study with a huge grain of salt.
jerry at February 7, 2018 9:55 AM
Wait, wut? You mean to say that women have been blaming men and demanding that they fix a "problem" for which women are completely responsible?
That doesn't sound right. Wonder what else women have got wrong by listening to feminists....
Jay R at February 7, 2018 10:19 AM
In the academic world, rewards are largely based on your publication record. Often, this is completely under your own control. Publication rates tend to be highly skewed, with perhaps 10% of the academics writing 90% of the papers. The most productive 1% may publish upwards of 200+ lifetime papers (depends on the field). That 1% is almost entirely men. Even the most productive 10% is mostly men. Women academics seem to (very subjective data point here) think this is unfair. The result can be explained by the facts that 1) men are more willing to work longer hours, 2) men are more aggressive (more willing to write a challenging paper), and 3) men play the "build an empire" such as their own lab with lots of technicians and post-docs game more often and better.
cc at February 8, 2018 9:05 AM
I have the solution to pay parity disputes.
Reduce the pay to match the lower paid employees.
Problem solved.
Why is it always 'more'... and never 'you are overpaid, time for a reduction'.
Earl Wertheimer at February 13, 2018 1:04 PM
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