The gender disclosure gap: Salary history bans unravel when men volunteer their income

Summary

The research paper "The gender disclosure gap: Salary history bans unravel when men volunteer their income" by Cowgill, Agan, and Gee (2024) investigates the effectiveness of salary history bans in mitigating pay inequalities, particularly in light of voluntary salary disclosures by job applicants. The study operates on the premise that while these bans aim to create a more equitable hiring process by preventing employers from requesting salary history, their success may be limited if job-seekers choose to volunteer this information unprompted. For their methodology, the authors conducted a comprehensive survey of American workers in 2019 and 2021. This survey focused on their recent job search experiences, specifically differentiating between instances where candidates were asked about their salary history and those where they were not. The study encompassed various U.S. jurisdictions, including those with and without salary history bans, allowing for an analysis of their real-world impact. The findings reveal a significant phenomenon termed "unravelling," where a substantial portion of workers, approximately 28%, voluntarily disclose their salary history even in the presence of a ban. Furthermore, an additional 47% are inclined to disclose if they perceive that other candidates are doing so, indicating a strong social pressure mechanism. A critical discovery is the existence of a "gender disclosure gap," where men are more prone than women to spontaneously share their salary information, especially when they believe it is a common practice among other applicants. Over the 1.5-year sample period, unprompted volunteering of salary histories saw an increase of 6–8 percentage points across the surveyed jurisdictions. The implications of these findings suggest that the intended benefits of salary history bans—namely, reducing pay disparities—are compromised by this voluntary disclosure behavior. Employers, aware that historically well-paid workers have an incentive to disclose, may infer that silence from other applicants signifies lower past earnings. This creates a self-reinforcing pressure for all workers to disclose their salaries to avoid the stigma associated with non-disclosure, thereby undermining the policy's objective. The study also highlights that this gender disclosure gap persists even after controlling for factors like historical salary and other observable characteristics, suggesting that even high-earning women are less likely to disclose than their male counterparts.