Reassessing the Gender Wage Gap

It's deceptively easy to calculate how much—or how little—women in the United States earn relative to men. “You take everyone who’s working 35 or more hours a week for the full year, find the median for women, find the median for men, and divide,” says Lee professor of economics Claudia Goldin, explaining how to arrive at the ratio repeated by public officials: 78 cents to the dollar. “It’s very simple.”