A note on benefit differentials of black and white female workers

Abstract

Large national micro-data bases (such as Current Population Survey and Survey of Income and Programme Participation) lack information on employer outlays for the fringe benefits paid workers. Therefore, this paper motivates research on intra-firm black–white differences in non-wage fringe benefits using data on female office workers of a large public university. Empirical results indicate that racial differences exist among the fringes (pension, health and life insurance, sick leave, longevity pay, vacation) and also vary across department sizes. The differentials tend to disappear, however, when combined benefits or total compensation is used as a modelling framework. These results suggest potential sensitivity of regression model estimates, of black–white benefit gaps to the degree of aggregation in the data being modelled.