NerdWallet study finds 22 U.S. cities where women out-earn men
NerdWallet, a website aimed at offering users personal finance advice, conducted a study of the overall difference in wages between men and women in the United States using government census data. While the study found that women still earn less than men in most parts of the country, it also discovered a total of 22 cities in the U.S. where women earn higher yearly wages on average than men.
Over a third of the cities listed by NerdWallet are located in California, with Inglewood leading the pack at 20.6 percent higher wages for women than men. Several more are located in Florida, and the rest are scattered across the country in nine other states.
The pay difference in some of the cities is minimal, with women earning less than 1 percent more than men, but change over time for many of those cities is significant. For example, the gender wage gap in Dallas, the only city in Texas to make the list, changed by 172 percent between 2005 and 2013, showing remarkable progress in a short time.
“Income inequality is linked to more than gender”
Unfortunately, NerdWallet’s data is not without its limitations, as the comparisons are based solely on year-end earnings. It does not take into account factors such as the total number of hours worked, which could skew the data one way or the other. For example, a woman working 60 hours a week could earn more than a man working 30 hours a week despite earning a lower overall wage. The study also does not distinguish between job titles, education, and so on.
NerdWallet’s Courtney Miller admits that surveying the gender wage gap from a purely data-driven approach is difficult. “The gap in wages is complex because income inequality is linked to more than gender,” Miller wrote. “Women and men work different hours, in different industries and they also earn bachelor’s degrees at different rates.
“All of these factors have shifted from 2005 to 2013, making it difficult to determine if cities are seeing a real reduction in inequality or if the changes are coming from differences in education and the jobs that follow — which influence the wage gap.”
Chart created by Eric David
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