1、February 2025Tough trade-offs:How time and career choices shape the gender pay gapNearly 80 percent of the US gender pay gap is driven by women having flatter work experience arcs compared with men,based on an analysis of 86,000 real-life online career histories.by Anu Madgavkar,Kweilin Ellingrud,Sv

2、en Smit,Chris Bradley,Olivia White,and Kanmani ChockalingamWhether sorting packages in the mailroom,coding in Python,or tending to patients,everyone starts their career somewhere.Yet in most industries,a first job is merely an entry point.What happens over the course of a career is crucial to buildi

3、ng an individuals human capital.Human capital is formally defined as the knowledge,skills,competencies,and attributes that individuals possess.1 Its accumulation begins in childhood and continues throughout educational stages and working life.The value of human capital is realized when people put it

4、 to workthat is,by gaining work experienceand pay is an important signal of that value.(Terms printed in italics are defined in the glossary.)Work experience,pay,and human capital itself are linked in complicated ways,and the threads are hard to unravel.One worker may enjoy pay hikes as she moves fr

5、om one role to another and acquires additional skills,a pattern of work experience that enhances both her human capital and the way it is valued through her pay.But another worker may see her human capital eroding over time as her skills go unused in a lower-paying role that doesnt require them.In t

6、his case,both human capital and its value diminish.Meanwhile,two workers who started out possessing similar skills may go on to earn differing levels of pay when they switch into roles with varying organizational and industry characteristics,indicating that the same human capital is valued different