The well-documented gap between men's and women's earnings has aroused intense debate over the concept of comparable worth, that is, equal pay for work judged to be of equal value. Government, business, labor unions, and the courts have been forced to consider whether workers in dissimilar jobs of comparable worth—measured by such criteria as working conditions, degree of difficulty, and knowledge and responsibility required—should receive equal wages, and how wage adjustments can be implemented.The issue has provoked inflated rhetoric, litigation, and considerable confusion. In this concise study, Henry J. Aaron and Cameran M. Lougy review the conditions that have sparked the debate and unravel the implications of comparable worth for employers in public and private sectors, for labor union agendas and employer-employee negotiations, and for the administrative and and judicial burdens of the nation's courts. The authors conclude with general guidelines for implementing wage adjustments in ways that would not seriously disrupt society or have a major impact on overall economic efficiency.

Comparable worthâ€"equal pay for jobs of equal valueâ€"has been called the civil rights issue of the 1980s. This volume consists of a committee report that sets forth an agenda of much-needed research on this issue, supported by six papers contributed by eminent social scientists. The research agenda presented is structured around two general themes: (1) occupational wage differentials and discrimination and (2) wage adjustment strategies and their impact. The papers deal with a wide range of topics, including job evaluation, social judgment biases in comparable worth analysis, the economics of comparable worth, and prospects for pay equity.

Including contributions by both British and American researchers, this book explores equal value developments in the two countries. Through thematic chapters and case studies, it examines legal developments, trade union activity, the operation of job evaluation, and the race and class politics of equal value. Both the possibilities and the limits of equal value reform are discussed.