Men make more than women on average. This is well known. What is less well understood is why. Some people attribute the gender wage gap to discrimination. Others suggest that the wage gap is largely attributable to the fact that women are more likely to experience career interruption because of childbirth. As reported in the New York Times, economist Mukesh Eswaran decided to conduct a series of experiments to determine whether something deeper is at work.
In one set of experiments called the dictator game, players were given $10 and allowed, but not required to, hand out some of it to a hidden anonymous partner. Women on average gave away more than a dollar sixty. Men gave away only 82 cents. In another test called the ultimatum game, one player received $10 and then decided how much of it to offer to a partner. So if I offered you $2 and you accepted, that’s what you would get and I would keep 8.
But if you refused my offer, we would both get nothing. Remarkably, both men and women made lower offers on average when the partner was a woman. Male proposers offered males partners 30¢ more than female partners on average. Women proposers offered male partners about 80¢ more.
