Research

Publications

Essential workers and wage inequality: Wage differentials before and during the Covid-19 pandemic, 2006 to 2022, European Societies, (Forthcoming).
Preprint bibtex citation code

Graphical abstract ess_worker_wages
Abstract In 2020, several governments declared specific occupations as essential for maintaining the functioning of society in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. A current question in the public debate on fair pay is whether essential workers are sufficiently remunerated. Using data from the Netherlands, I analyze the wages of essential workers relative to other workers before and during the Covid-19 pandemic. Results indicate that essential workers earn less relative to other workers within higher-paid strata of the occupational structure, while they earn more within lower-paid strata. These wage differentials are shaped by gender composition and sectoral employment. I employ a difference-in-differences design based on quarterly data between January 2017 and September 2022 to assess whether the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic affected wage differentials due to an increasing public appreciation of essential work. Results indicate that the collective experience of the Covid-19 pandemic has not benefited essential workers in the short-term.

Occupations and careers within organizations: Do organizations facilitate unequal wage growth?, Social Science Research, 120, (2024).
Awarded the Vered Kraus Award at the ISA RC28 Spring Meeting 2023
Article bibtex citation code

Graphical abstract occ_wagegrowth_org
Abstract Recent research suggests that occupational positions and organizational structures intersect during the formation of wage inequality over the working career. Using administrative data from the Netherlands, I investigate whether workers who start in different occupational positions experience unequal wage growth while remaining employed in an organization. Results show that workers in professional and managerial positions experience larger wage growth than workers in lower-status occupational positions. After six years of staying at the same organization, predicted wage growth rates vary between 5.44% for production workers and 10.18% for technical professionals. These findings indicate that occupational stratification has a dynamic component that unfolds at the level of organizations. I test whether occupational sorting across organizations with differing pay quality mediates part of the occupation-based heterogeneity in wage growth. The results indicate that occupational sorting is marked but that sorting explains only up to around 8% of heterogeneity in firm-internal wage growth between occupational positions in the Dutch labor market.

Temporary employment and wage inequality over the life course, European Sociological Review, 40(5): 853-871, (2024).
(with Thijs Bol and Bram Lancee)
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Graphical abstract inequality_lifecourse
Abstract Wage inequality between workers with different levels of educational attainment has been shown to increase over the life course. In this study, we investigate to what extent this growth is explained by temporary employment. Using linked employer-employee register data from the Netherlands, we follow the labor market careers of workers born in 1979. We decompose the impact of temporary employment on the change in the educational wage gap over the life course into two distinct components: (a) changes in the group-specific temporary employment rates (group-specific risk) and (b) changes in the group-specific effects of temporary employment on wages (group-specific vulnerability). In line with previous research, we find a marked growth of the educational wage gap over the life course. While group differences in temporary employment risk changed throughout the observation period to the detriment of lower-educated workers, group differences in vulnerability to temporary employment increased specifically during the early life course. Overall, temporary employment explains approximately 9% of the change in the wage gap between workers with different levels of educational attainment by the age of 38 relative to age 28 in the Netherlands.

Occupations, organizations, and the structure of wage inequality in the Netherlands, Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, 70, (2020).
(with Thijs Bol)
Article bibtex citation code

Graphical abstract occ_org_percentiles
Abstract Recent studies have identified both occupations and organizations as important structures underpinning wage inequality in the labor market. In this article we investigate how the two structures might work together in explaining inequality. More specifically, we study how organizations affect between- and within-occupation inequality. Using a combination of Dutch linked employer-employee register data and the Dutch labor force survey, we find that organizations are more important in explaining wage differentials between occupations than wage inequality between workers with the same occupation. While organizations are far away from solely driving heterogeneity in pay among workers in the same occupation, we find that the sorting of high-paying occupations in high-paying firms (and vice versa) is an important mechanism by which both structures affect inequality. Our findings emphasize the importance of moving away from an isolated study of occupations or organizations towards an analytical integration of both structures for understanding wage inequality.

Work in Progress

Under Review

The effect of early tracking on relative age effects in education
(with Melline Somers (first author), Rolf van der Velden and Roxanne Korthals)

Abstract Most education systems regulate school entry by using a specific annual cut-off date to group children into starting cohorts. Prior research shows that relatively younger students often perform worse than their older peers, with this gap diminishing over time. However, this effect varies across countries. Our study analyses how early tracking influences performance gaps in math, science, and reading. Using TIMSS, PIRLS, and PISA data, we find that in early tracking countries, age-related inequalities decline more slowly than in late tracking countries. Policy responses could include delaying tracking or offering flexibility to address misallocations later.

In Preparation

Variability and change of the glass ceiling: An organizational approach using linked-employer-employee data

Graphical abstract withinq_all_2022
Abstract In its original conception, the metaphor of the glass ceiling has clear organizational roots. It describes a vertical form of job sex segregation by portraying the hidden, but systemic, barriers that prevent women from climbing career ladders within organizations. Yet, research that treats the glass ceiling as an organizational phenomenon has often been limited to single-firm or single-industry case studies due to data constraints. In this paper, I leverage administrative linked employer-employee earnings data from 2011 to 2023 to comprehensively describe variability and change of the glass ceiling in the total population of larger organizations in the Netherlands. I explicitly conceptualize the glass ceiling as an organization-level outcome captured by the under-representation of women in the highest-paid jobs within an organization. Based on earnings data available for all existing jobs, I fully reconstruct the existing job hierarchy in each organization and trace the distribution of men and women within it. I demonstrate the advantages of this approach by testing several hypotheses regarding the extent to which the glass ceiling varies both between organizations and within organizations across time.

Corporate Boardroom Quotas and Gender Equality in Organizations
(with Sören Tumeltshammer (first author) and Zoltán Lippényi)

Cracks in the glass ceiling? Cross-firm diffusion in top earner gender diversity in the Netherlands
(with Zoltán Lippényi)

Abstract The increasing representation of women in corporate leadership positions has been heralded as a sign of a broken glass ceiling and an important step toward greater gender equality. At the same time, there is a remarkable heterogeneity of gender diversity in leadership and top-earning positions across firms and industries, and earlier research shows that equalization processes develop at different rates in different organizational fields. To explain such variation, existing studies either focus on external institutional influences, such as affirmative action policies, or on emergent processes within organizations, such as inequality regimes. Less attention has been paid to the inter-firm diffusion of gender equality processes. Our paper aims to fill this gap. Building on and extending relational inequality theory (RIT), which mainly focuses on workplace claims-making processes, we theorize how status position and inter-firm network relations within organizational fields affect inequality in organizations. Specifically, we draw on institutional and network theory to argue that gender diversity in top earning positions is an institutional process embedded in and influenced by organizational field position and inter-organizational network relations. We use the case of the non-mandatory Dutch boardroom quota as an "institutional shock" to identify institutional origins of diversity diffusion. In recent decades, several European countries have introduced boardroom quotas for large corporations to achieve a more balanced representation of women in top management. The Netherlands, in response to low national rates of female corporate leadership, introduced such measures in 2013 for leading large firms (listed firms and the largest unlisted firms based on size, assets and turnover) with a weak enforcement rule (comply or explain the lack of compliance in annual reports). However, outside of the elite target firms, the impact of quotas on gender diversity in the boardroom remains unknown. We examine the extent to which a weakly enforced rule of gender-balanced leadership diffuses across organizational domains, and how diffusion depends on two mechanisms: the compliance of quota-targeted and high-status firms with gender diversity in leadership given the available candidate pool in the pipeline (high-paying positions below the executive level), and inter-firm mobility networks based on interlocking directorates that are likely to transmit norms of compliance with quota targets. We also examine whether compliance patterns converge on or exceed the 30 percent rule of the quota regulation. We use longitudinal microdata on the complete population of Dutch firms’ age, size, assets, revenue, legal form, and industry from the Dutch Business Register [ABR] ]linked to individual data on employment and wages of workers from mandatory social security administration [POLISBUS] and, uniquely, data of all functionaries and their board assignments between 2006 and 2021 registered in the Dutch Chamber of Commerce. With these data sources, we construct and link longitudinal (1) firm diversity profiles in executive and top earning positions, (2) measures of firm status in the field (based industry-specific revenue, size, and financial performance), and (3) measures of firm network position (e.g. centrality) based on board memberships of executives (interlocking directorates) and their recent inter-board mobility. We identify firms sanctioned by corporate quota based on legal form, assets, and size to distinguish firms in field that are targeted and sanctioned. We examine cross-firm diffusion in top earner gender diversity using regression methodology. We model the likelihood of a board assignment of women and the gender composition in top-earning positions within non-targeted organizations as a function of the extent of compliance of quota-targeted high-status firms within a given institutional field as well as the overall network position of non-targeted organizations. We are currently in the process of constructing the dataset and first results are expected within the next 2-3 months. Our paper contributes to recent efforts by institutional scholars to understand how the interrelations of corporate actors condition the influence of institutions on local, organizational-level practices. Early institutional scholarship argued that new legislation creates uncertainty in organizations, leading them to mimic the responses of others in their field. Such processes were thought to lead to the diffusion of new organizational practices and the increasing similarity of organizations. Subsequent work, however, has shown that organizations vary in their responses to institutional pressures. This may be particularly true for novel, less stringent, and controversial regulations, such as gender quotas, which may contradict the preferences of local powerful actors (e.g., powerful men and field-leading corporations) and thus lead to divergent local interpretations and strategic responses. However, local gender diversity outcomes in highly visible positions are likely to have a mirroring effect on other firms through inter-firm relational processes, which has received little attention in the gender diversity and inequality literature. We describe the field-specific diffusion patterns of gender-diversity in managerial and high-paying sub-managerial positions across organizations as "cracks in the glass ceiling" to highlight the interdependent nature of the process.

Dissertation

Inequality at work: Occupations, organizations, and the wage distribution, University of Amsterdam, (2024).
Thesis

cover_dissertation
Abstract The occupational structure, the aggregate distribution of workers across different job roles that link people to pay, has long served as the dominant framework for understanding the unequal allocation of economic rewards in society. At the same time, recent empirical trends indicate that organizations are accountable for rising wage inequality in many countries. Organizations represent social spaces where economic resources are pooled and decisions regarding their distribution across workers are negotiated. Based on quantitative analyses of large-scale administrative data, this dissertation unpacks how occupations - ‘what’ people work - and organizations - ‘where’ people work - intersect during the formation of wage inequality. It addresses questions regarding the aggregate structure of wage inequality and studies how individual life chances are shaped by occupations and organizations in the Netherlands.

Other

Database international school system characteristics and flexibility indicators: Manual, ROA Technical Reports No. 003, (2024).
(with Melline Somers)
Database