Cohort effects in age-earnings profiles for women: Implications for forensic analysis

Forensic economists typically estimate age-earnings profiles using cross-sectional data from one point in time. This approach leads to inaccurate predictions for younger women. Cohorts of younger women have more education and better access to higher paying jobs than their predecessors. Consequently as they age, their earnings experience is likely to be different than the cohorts of women preceding them. We measure the divergence between estimates using the traditional approach and those obtained when accounting for cohort effects. While the divergence is relatively small early in women's careers, it becomes more pronounced - more than 10 percent- as women move into the later parts of their working lives.