The correlation of occupational gender composition and wages is the basis of pay equity/comparable worth legislation. A number of previous studies have examined this correlation in US data, identifying some of the determinants of low wages in female jobs, as well as important limitations of...

We investigate the effect of pro-active comparable worth legislation covering both the public and private sectors on wages, the gender wage gap and the gender composition of employment. The focus is the pay equity initiative of the Canadian province of Ontario in the early 1990s. We document...

In this paper, we investigate the mechanism by which the femaleness of occupations has a negative effect on women's wages. We relate US/Canada differences in labor market institutions, the returns to skills and other dimensions of the wage structure, such as occupational rents, to corresponding...

We leverage recent income support reforms for families with children in Canada to investigate the impact of child benefits on child health and educational outcomes. Using administrative school data from British Columbia linked to parent’s tax files, we find evidence that increased family...