Education, Gender, and Work in Explaining Income Inequality

This paper looks at how education, sex, hours worked, occupational prestige, and type of job (government or private) relate to people's income. Using data from the General Social Survey (GSS), we used Stata to run different types of analysis, including descriptive, bivariate, multivariate, moderation, mediation, and prediction. Our results showed that education has a strong positive effect on income. Hours worked and occupational prestige also increase income, while being female is linked to lower income compared to males. Working in the government or private sector did not have a big impact. We also found that hours worked partly explains how education affects income (mediation), and that sex slightly changes the strength of the education-income link (moderation). These findings gives us better understanding of the factors that shape people's earnings in the United States.