This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, May 16, 2024. I'm Caleb Brown.

The more you dig into the much maligned pay gap between men and women. Almost all of the

difference vanishes. That smaller gap, the remains of course, is up for debate, but

before considering heavy-handed regulation of the labor market, Cato's Vanessa Brown Calder argues for

a little humility.

She provides details in her essay in the new book, The War on Prices. Vanessa since we last spoke about the gender pay gap I regret to inform you that our brief conversation did not lay this issue to rest once and for all.

Why am I not surprised though?

It has persisted and as we mentioned before we started recording the pay gap between men and

women in the workforce is a myth to a point.

Yeah.

Let's steal man the argument, if you can, of the other side, which is we have this pay gap the differences between men and women's

earnings it is significant it has shrunk yeah it. I think the most credible proponents of this idea, the people who

advance some reforms related to it would admit that much. But what is it that they are claiming?

Well, I think different sources claim different things. You know, I think a lot of times

when people talk about the gender pay gap, they do so in sort of a loose way. There's a lot of

misperceptions, there's misrepresentations of what the statistic means as you alluded to.

Some people still think truly that there is a lot of workplace

discrimination out there and that hiring managers

are discriminating against their female workers for whatever reason.

People also worry that perhaps there are social and cultural pressures that are holding women back.

And I think that's a little bit of the more nuanced view

on the gender pay gap.

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