#21 - A study of the difference in earnings between men and

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Resolve the Paradox. The correct answer choice is (D)

There are two studies to deal with in this stimulus. The first involves the relative earnings of men and women who are employed full time. The second involves the relative earnings of all employed men and women. The relative earnings for all employed women are much lower than the relative earnings for full time employed women. In such a situation, you should look to see what would likely be the factor in one survey that would cause such a deviation. Here, the one thing that does not seem to be addressed is the fact that part-time workers were included in the second study. Therefore, chances are the correct answer will involve part-time workers.

Answer choice (A): The discrepancy we are trying to resolve is based upon current salaries, not on the changes in salaries through the years. Therefore, any answer focused upon those changes will do nothing to resolve the current discrepancy.

Answer choice (B): This similarity between men’s and women’s salaries in similar full time positions would be factored into both studies, so therefore would not have any effect on the differences between the two studies.

Answer choice (C): This would be a good answer choice to explain changes in women’s relative earnings from year to year, but it does nothing to explain the differences in the two studies regarding current earnings.

Answer choice (D): This is the correct answer choice. Here we finally find our answer choice that takes the part time workers into consideration. Knowing that more women than men are part-time workers and part-time workers earn less than full time workers, explains the discrepancy between the first study and the second study.

Answer choice (E): We are concerned only with the differences between the two studies in Naota. Any information regarding differences in other countries is going to do nothing to resolve the discrepancy between the two Naota studies.

[ellenb]

Dear Powerscore,

For this question, I did not like none of the answers. I guess, I should have read the stimulus more carefully where it said, the average employed full time woman vs. the average earnings of all employed women. So, is this the key to this stimulus, all woman vs. full time women. Since, if we include all women full-time and the part-time women and all man (most of them work full-time) of course the women will be making much less than the men. So, this is the additional part that was missing? and I thought that the key is that the difference was increasing between the worker's earnings.

Also, I did not like that in the stimulus, they did not state when the years of the studies were made? Which makes it a bit flawed, since that was my prephrase that the years that the studies were done were different and that is why since the gap has been increasing, it makes sense that one year is lower than the other year's study.

Hope, my thought process, makes sense, or not. I just wanted to put my thoughts on paper and to show how I thought about it.

thanks

Ellen

[Steve Stein]

Hi ellenb,

In that one, full time employed women make 80% of what full time employed men make. But when you compare all working women to all employed men, they make a smaller percentage (65%) of what men make.

That means that when the non-full-timers get added to the mix, the women's earnings become smaller in comparison. The right answer should explain this, and answer choice D does: if, as D provides, more women work part time and thus make less, this would explain the discrepancy in the percentages presented in the stimulus.

I hope that's helpful! Please let me know whether this is clear--thanks!

~Steve