Values and Inequality: Prosocial Jobs and the College Wage Premium
<jats:p> Employers often recruit workers by invoking corporate social responsibility, organizational purpose, or other claims to a prosocial mission. In an era of substantial labor market inequality, commentators typically dismiss these claims as hypocritical: prosocial employers often turn ou...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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SAGE Publications
2022
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/144385 |
| _version_ | 1811093045688401920 |
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| author | Wilmers, Nathan Zhang, Letian |
| author2 | Sloan School of Management |
| author_facet | Sloan School of Management Wilmers, Nathan Zhang, Letian |
| author_sort | Wilmers, Nathan |
| collection | MIT |
| description | <jats:p> Employers often recruit workers by invoking corporate social responsibility, organizational purpose, or other claims to a prosocial mission. In an era of substantial labor market inequality, commentators typically dismiss these claims as hypocritical: prosocial employers often turn out to be no more generous with low-wage workers than are other employers. In this article, we argue that prosocial commitments in fact inadvertently reduce earnings inequality, but through a different channel than generosity. Building on research on job values, we hypothesize that college graduates are more willing than nongraduates to sacrifice pay for prosocial impact. When employers appeal to prosocial values, they can thus disproportionately reduce pay for higher-educated workers. We test this theory with data on online U.S. job postings. We find that prosocial jobs requiring a college degree post lower pay than do standard postings with exactly the same job requirements; prosocial jobs that do not require a college degree, however, pay no differently from other low-education jobs. This gap reduces the aggregate college wage premium by around 5 percent. We present a variety of supplementary evidence using labor market data, worker survey responses, and a vignette experiment with hiring managers. The findings reveal an unintended consequence of employers’ embrace of prosocial values: it offsets macro-level inequality. </jats:p> |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T15:38:39Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/144385 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T15:38:39Z |
| publishDate | 2022 |
| publisher | SAGE Publications |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1443852023-06-12T17:37:54Z Values and Inequality: Prosocial Jobs and the College Wage Premium Wilmers, Nathan Zhang, Letian Sloan School of Management <jats:p> Employers often recruit workers by invoking corporate social responsibility, organizational purpose, or other claims to a prosocial mission. In an era of substantial labor market inequality, commentators typically dismiss these claims as hypocritical: prosocial employers often turn out to be no more generous with low-wage workers than are other employers. In this article, we argue that prosocial commitments in fact inadvertently reduce earnings inequality, but through a different channel than generosity. Building on research on job values, we hypothesize that college graduates are more willing than nongraduates to sacrifice pay for prosocial impact. When employers appeal to prosocial values, they can thus disproportionately reduce pay for higher-educated workers. We test this theory with data on online U.S. job postings. We find that prosocial jobs requiring a college degree post lower pay than do standard postings with exactly the same job requirements; prosocial jobs that do not require a college degree, however, pay no differently from other low-education jobs. This gap reduces the aggregate college wage premium by around 5 percent. We present a variety of supplementary evidence using labor market data, worker survey responses, and a vignette experiment with hiring managers. The findings reveal an unintended consequence of employers’ embrace of prosocial values: it offsets macro-level inequality. </jats:p> 2022-08-19T17:40:51Z 2022-08-19T17:40:51Z 2022 2022-08-19T17:00:53Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/144385 Wilmers, Nathan and Zhang, Letian. 2022. "Values and Inequality: Prosocial Jobs and the College Wage Premium." American Sociological Review, 87 (3). en 10.1177/00031224221089335 American Sociological Review Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ application/pdf SAGE Publications Prof. Nathan Wilmers |
| spellingShingle | Wilmers, Nathan Zhang, Letian Values and Inequality: Prosocial Jobs and the College Wage Premium |
| title | Values and Inequality: Prosocial Jobs and the College Wage Premium |
| title_full | Values and Inequality: Prosocial Jobs and the College Wage Premium |
| title_fullStr | Values and Inequality: Prosocial Jobs and the College Wage Premium |
| title_full_unstemmed | Values and Inequality: Prosocial Jobs and the College Wage Premium |
| title_short | Values and Inequality: Prosocial Jobs and the College Wage Premium |
| title_sort | values and inequality prosocial jobs and the college wage premium |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/144385 |
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