Data Source

"American Community Survey, 5-year estimates: The American Community Survey (ACS) is a nationwide survey designed to give communities a fresh look at how they are changing. It is critical in the Census Bureau's reengineered decennial census program. The ACS collects and produces population and housing information yearly instead of every ten years and publishes one-year and five-year estimates. The County Health Rankings use American Community Survey data to measure social and economic factors."

Measure Methods

• "Gender Pay Gap is a ratio: Gender Pay Gap is expressed as "cents on the dollar," or women's median earnings in cents compared to every dollar (100 cents) of men's median earnings. Women's median earnings are the level of earnings where half of full-time, year-round female workers earn more than this value, and half earn less. Men's median earnings follow the same definition for male workers."

• "Measure limitations: Pay inequities are even more stark for most women of color. The pay gap is the largest for Hispanic women, who earn just over half what white men in the U.S. are paid. This measure is not disaggregated by race, which could help quantify the effects of a combined gender and race pay gap affecting opportunity and outcomes for women of color. The American Community Survey captures a binary representation of gender. People with intersectional identities (e.g., transgender women) experience compounding power differentials, which are not captured in these data. The Gender Pay Gap measure represents median annual earnings; studies using median hourly or weekly earnings show an even larger gender pay gap."

• "Numerator: The numerator is women's median annual earnings for full-time, year-round workers ages 16 and older with earnings in a county."

• "Denominator: The denominator is men's median annual earnings for full-time, year-round workers ages 16 and older with earnings in a county."

• "Can This Measure Be Used to Track Progress?: This measure can be used to track progress with some caveats. While the amount of available funding can impact the effectiveness of education, not all funds are spent equally well and can impact various student groups differently. The outcome that these data focus on are standardized test scores and school funding can have positive impacts on education that are not captured in this outcome. There are also questions about the bias of standardized test scores against students of color. Finally, these data are limited to K-12 public school funding; they do not cover private or homeschooled students."

Source: Gender Pay Gap* | County Health Rankings & Roadmaps

References

• Gould E, Schieder J, Geier K. What is the gender pay gap and is it real? Economic Policy Institute. 2016; 1-42. epi.org/112962.  

• Fry R. U.S. women near milestone in the college-educated labor force. 2019; https://pewrsr.ch/2ZEVQB3.  

• Platt J, Prins S, Bates L, Keyes K. Unequal depression for equal work? How the wage gap explains gendered disparities in mood disorders. 2016; 149:1-8.   

• Kawachi I, Kennedy BP, Gupta V, Prothrow-Stith D. Women's status and the health of women and men: a view from the States. Social science & medicine. 1999 Jan 1;48(1):21-32. 

• Milner A, Kavanagh A, Scovelle AJ, O'Neil A, Kalb G, Hewitt B, King TL. Gender Equality and Health in High-Income Countries: A Systematic Review of Within-Country Indicators of Gender Equality in Relation to Health Outcomes. Women's Health Reports. 2021 Apr 1;2(1):113-23. 

• Jun HJ, Subramanian SV, Gortmaker S, Kawachi I. A multilevel analysis of women's status and self-rated health in the United States. Journal of the American Medical Women's Association (1972). 2004 Jan 1;59(3):172-80. 

• Kramer KZ, Myhra LL, Zuiker VS, et al. Comparison of Poverty and Income Disparity of Single Mothers and Fathers Across Three Decades: 1990–2010. Gend. Issues 33, 22–41 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12147-015-9144-3

• Payscale. The state of the gender pay gap in 2021. 2021: https://www.payscale.com/research-and-insights/gender-pay-gap/#section14 

• Lips H. The Gender pay gap: Challenging the rationalizations. Perceived equity, discrimination, and the limits of human capital models. Sex Roles. 2013; 68:169-185.