Who Deserves More? : An Analytical Case Study on Fair Pay Using the Listening to Georgia Survey

Overview & Synopsis

This case study looks at perceptions of fair pay in Georgia using data from the Listening to Citizens of Georgia survey data. While men and women achieve similar education, women remain less engaged in the labor market. Social attitudes reinforce these gaps: many believe women should reduce their work time or earn less than men. The experiment results both from a national household sampling and RDD sampling reflect these views: for the same position and pay, women are more likely to be seen as overpaid, while men are more often viewed as underpaid. These biases are more pronounced in rural areas and apply across occupations. These consistent results across two different sampling methods strengthen confidence that the bias reflects widely held social norms. The RDD data, which records respondent characteristics, further shows that these attitudes are shared by both male and female respondents and older respondents express stronger biases than younger ones towards women.