Solomon Polachek on why men and women have different wages via the human capital model

Solomon Polachek, Distinguished Professor of Economics at Binghamton University, State University of New York, discusses his academic career, his teaching awards, his past and ongoing research on the gender wage gap, and his role as Dean of Harpur College at Binghamton University.

In this episode, Polachek and Ashenfelter discuss:

• Polachek’s early years growing up in Washington, D.C. “It was a fantastic place to grow up… I was able to sit in on Senate hearings, sit in on the House… [and] even talk to Congress people and senators.” 
• Polachek’s educational journey from George Washington University to Columbia University, where he worked with Jacob Mincer, considered the “father of modern labor economics.”  
• Polachek’s Ph.D. dissertation work on the wage gap between the genders and his use of a human capital model. “...I said that the difference in lifetime labor force participation between men and women, especially the married versus single, could explain the differences in the marginal gain of investment in human capital, and that led to a theory of human capital explanation to the gender difference in wage.” 
• His move to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “One of the reasons I chose Chapel Hill… was that it had the kind of IBM computers that [were] compatible with all the data that I was using.” 
• His move to Binghamton University, where he has taught since 1983, won two teaching awards, and was the Dean of Harpur College from 1996 to 2000. “...the alumni were really fascinating [to work with] because the alumni that you meet are basically the ones that really loved going to Binghamton University and they want to give back, and they all have very interesting stories...”
• His current work on the gender wage gap. “...the question is why is it that men have a higher wage than women at the outset of marriage? … it turns out that within marriages, men in the U.S. are about two years older than wives. And it's true that in every single country, except for one, the husbands are older than the wives.” 

Solomon Polchak earned his Ph.D. from Columbia University 1973. He is the Distinguished Professor of Economics at Binghamton University, State University of New York. He also served as the Dean of Harpur College, which is the arts and science college of Binghamton University, and is editor of Research in Labor Economics. His research interests include labor economics, human capital and income distribution, econometrics, and the impact of economic considerations on international relations. "The Work Goes On"—a podcast produced by Princeton's Industrial Relations Section (IR Section)—is an oral history of industrial relations and labor economics hosted by Princeton's Orley Ashenfelter.