Data is drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health and the 2000 U.S. Census in order to analyze how different dimensions of physical appearance and the gender distribution of workers within a given occupation influence earnings. Grooming was identified as the primary determinant of attractiveness, and higher levels of attractiveness and grooming were positively associated with earnings. Although the labor market returns to physical attractiveness and to personality attractiveness did not differ significantly by gender, women generated greater returns to grooming whereas men experienced some significant BMI-based premia.

This study uniquely shows that the returns to attractiveness and to grooming fluctuate not only according to an individual’s gender identity, but also to the gender composition of their job. The returns to attractiveness differed between male-dominated, female-dominated, and gender egalitarian jobs - especially among women. Women within male-dominated jobs experienced income penalties for being unattractive or very attractive. Thus, male-dominated occupations not only persist as ripe sites for the proliferation of gender-based and attractiveness-based inequalities, but they are the sole occupational context where the Beauty is Beastly Effect was detected. The Beauty is Beastly Effect did not similarly occur on the basis of grooming, nor did it impact men.

The returns to grooming varied across the three occupational gender distributions to a greater extent than the returns to attractiveness, and they did so in more complex ways. The returns to grooming varied more for women within each occupational context, but they varied more for men between the three contexts. Interestingly, sex-segregated occupations primarily impeded the grooming premia earned by very well groomed men. Overall, men and women may be more susceptible to income penalties for violating gendered appearance norms when they are employed in a “gender inappropriate” job.

Finally, in occupations where female and male workers were more equally represented, attractiveness penalties were no longer identified and there were also fewer gender differences in the returns to attractiveness and to grooming. These findings suggest that the continued efforts to diversify occupations can contribute towards eradicating gender-based and appearance-based labor market inequalities.

Little is known about men in reproductive health and family planning, as well as how men and women’s early attitudes towards pregnancy might have long lasting effects on early fatherhood. My dissertation uses qualitative and quantitative methods to investigate masculinities prior to conception when young men and women are trying to prevent or avoid pregnancy, during gestation through unintended pregnancy resolution, and after birth through fathers’ involvement with young children.

I first use in-depth interviews with 40 young low-income men and women of color to address how gender shapes contraceptive management and ideologies pertaining to unintended pregnancy decision-making for young people. I then turn to regression analysis to determine how women’s abortion considerations during gestation correlate to fathers’ engagement, accessibility and responsibility after a pregnancy is brought to term.

My qualitative research identifies how men can support women with contraceptive methods in ways that do not restrict women’s agency. This is despite a variety of structural barriers, such as immigration laws and poverty, which tend to disproportionately block their active participation in reproductive matters. I identify a hybrid masculinity in the way that men present seemingly egalitarian behaviors through their support of women partners in contraception, but also further perceptions of women’s individualized risk of bearing the consequences of an unintended pregnancy. Men tend to take a secondary place in managing the risk of unintended pregnancy, but then at the prospect of experiencing an unintended pregnancy, feel that taking responsibility entails their strong decision-making power to either continue or terminate the pregnancy. These tensions within contraceptive management and between contraception and unintended pregnancy highlight the ways that both men and women struggle to negotiate men’s place in the feminized domain of reproduction.

My quantitative work reveals that both men and women’s abortion considerations affect paternal involvement at different points in time. Parents’ relationship quality mediates these relationships. This suggests that women are critical to shaping paternity for men, and that men’s abortion considerations influence relationships with women, which in turn influence their paternal behavior. My research has strong implications for policy pertaining to contraception, unintended pregnancy and abortion.

Racial disparities in the United States are well-documented, but social scientists know little about how other aspects of race, like skin color, affect people's experiences within different institutions. A growing body of research demonstrates that racial minorities with darker skin have worse socioeconomic outcomes than their lighter-skinned counterparts. However, because this work commonly analyzes individuals from different families, scholars have difficulty extricating whether variations in the outcome of interest are due to skin color bias or to differences in unobserved family characteristics. I improve upon prior studies by using an innovative within-family approach with sibling data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, which I argue provides analytical leverage. I first examine the relationship between skin color and different outcomes among a nationally-representative sample. Then, to account for mutual unobserved and observed family characteristics, I use sibling fixed-effects models to consider whether outcomes vary by skin color among members of the same family. I find that skin color is a significant predictor of the life chances of siblings in arrest outcomes, educational attainment, and income. This dissertation contributes to the existing literature by providing a first step towards understanding the implications of skin color for enduring racial inequality. I improve upon existing studies of colorism by analyzing siblings who have a shared family background. In doing so, my study begins to illuminate how skin color continues to be a source of stratification in the United States both across and within families for racial and ethnic minorities.

Academic course failure is perhaps surprisingly common in the US education system. Studies in educational development suggest that course failure has universally negative effects on students’ educational outcomes. However, it is unclear the degree to which these negative results may be driven by differences between students who do and do not fail, and whether all students are equally impacted. My dissertation examines how course failure and academic labels impact young adults’ academic and labor market outcomes, focusing on differences across student characteristics, and using quasi-experimental research designs to account for differences in prior academic or demographic characteristics between students who do and do not fail. Drawing on research in life course theory, I argue that failure more broadly should not be understood as aberrant but as an important part of the developmental process. Using three large, longitudinal data sources with academic transcript information, and employing quasi-experimental methods where possible, I demonstrate that course failure can compound advantages or disadvantages to have substantial impacts on future outcomes that vary by gender and race. Chapter 2 uses students’ college transcripts from the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS 88) to show that failing a so-called “weed out” course discourages women from pursuing STEM majors, but that men who fail major in STEM fields at similar rates to those who pass. In Chapter 3, I use transcript data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY97) to show that while college remedial coursework benefits some students, the substantial number of students who fail remediation are considerably worse off (e.g., they are less likely to graduate, take longer to graduate, and earn less) than peers who were not placed in remediation. Finally, Chapter 4 uses statewide administrative data to show that students with a more negative performance label have lower test scores and worse behavioral outcomes over time. My dissertation thus underscores how students who failed in school will likely access vastly different opportunities in education, the labor market, and other institutions.

Schools often adopt restorative justice programs in efforts to mitigate racial inequality in school discipline and to address growing concerns around the school-to-prison pipeline. While both the school-to-prison pipeline and restorative justice (RJ) programs have garnered attention, little is known about both the long-term impacts of experiencing school discipline and the extent to which interventions like RJ can mitigate these processes. Thus, this project draws on theoretical understandings of racial stratification and schools as organizations to investigate the long-term impacts of school discipline and examine restorative justice implementation in two school district contexts in the U.S. Drawing on unique data sources and utilizing inference-based statistical approaches, I investigate 1) how experiencing school discipline is associated with transition to adulthood outcomes 2) the extent to which RJ practices affect school discipline trends over time, and 3) how RJ effects may vary on the logic of adoption and implementation strategies. Analyses from my first empirical chapter link school discipline with young adult outcomes, finding that this linkage tends to be stronger for Black students. Subsequent chapters rely on inference-based statistical approaches to investigate how restorative interventions impacted school disciplinary disparities in two school districts and analyzes how the logic of both interventions led to a widening of racial disproportionality in one district and a narrowing disproportionality in the other. Taken together, this work provides a nuanced view of the structural conditions that surround school disciplinary disparities and the interventions that are often adopted to ameliorate them.

The processes that occur in the family are today probably the largest obstacle to continued progress in gender equality in the workplace. Gender differences in wages between single men and women are consistently found to be considerably smaller than among men and women who are married or have children. This study examines how family processes affect gender differences on wages using longitudinal matched employee-employer data from Norway, 1980-1997. We find that over this period the large wage penalty initially associated with marriage and children for women decreases substantially, so that by 1997 women who do the same work for the same employer earn similar wages, regardless of marital status or motherhood. This is not true among men, where the small wage premia for marriage and fatherhood remain relatively constant across this period. Thus, while gender differences at the beginning of this period were primarily due to women being penalized for marriage and motherhood, by the end of this period, family processes create gender differences in wages primarily through the premia for men. These results suggest that Norwegian family policies have been largely successful at ameliorating the wage penalties for women, so that the role of family on gender differences in wages is now primarily due to the male premia. We explore how these processes play out in wage growth and promotions, and conclude by discussing the policy implications of these findings for Norway and the United States.

The motherhood wage penalty is today probably the largest obstacle to progress in gender equality at work. Using matched employer-employee data from Norway (1980–97), a country with public policies that promote combining family and career, we investigate (a) whether the penalty arises from differential pay by employers or from sorting of employees on occupations and establishments, and (b) changes in the penalties over time in a period with major changes in family policies. The findings are as follows. (1) There are major wage penalties to motherhood, but these declined strongly over the 18–year period, likely caused by changes in family policies and in how families operate. (2) The penalty to motherhood is mostly due to sorting on occupations and occupation-establishment units. By 1995–97, mothers and nonmothers working in the same occupation-establishment unit were paid same wages. (3) Women who become mothers are wage wise positively selected, but the premia are wiped out by the negative effects of actual motherhood. (4) For wage growth, there were premia to motherhood in 1980–89, but none by 1990–97. In conclusion, the motherhood penalty is not due to employers paying mothers lower wages and its size appears sensitive to changes in family policies, with large reductions in penalties over time.