Women Earn 51% Less Than Men Over 15-Year Time Span, Study Shows

(Bloomberg) -- The wage gap for women is typically reported at around 80 cents for every dollar earned by men, but a new study argues it is even larger when measured over the long-term.

Women’s earnings were just 49 percent of men’s earnings -- or a 51 percent wage gap -- when measured by total earnings over 15 years for all those who worked in at least one year, according to a study by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research released Wednesday.

What’s more, progress slowed in the study period, between 2001 and 2015, compared with the preceding 30 years, economists Heidi Hartmann and Stephen Rose said in the report.

The study also found that among women who took off work for just one year, their earnings were 39 percent lower than for women who worked all 15 years.

“We have actually been underestimating the extent of pay inequality in the labor market,” Hartmann, who’s also IWPR’s president, said in a statement accompanying the study.

To contact the reporter on this story: Ivan Levingston in New York at ilevingston@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Scott Lanman at slanman@bloomberg.net, Jeff Kearns, Chris Fournier

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