The rationale for government policies aimed at promoting market work by women is examined according to the criteria of efficiency and equity. Efficiency involves the issues of market failure and labor market discrimination. Equity involves the economic well-being of women compared to that of men. The case for interventionist policies on behalf of women is found to be weak on efficiency grounds but strong on equity grounds. It is suggested that conventional measures of labor market discrimination against women are hopelessly ambiguous, and an alternative measure of economic discrimination is proposed. Lifetime measures of income for men and women are constructed to measure this concept of discrimination, and it is shown that women are poorer than men throughout most of their adult lives.

The 1980 census reveals a serious lag in the employment performance of young black men relative to young white men. With census data we test for demand-side causes of this lag, using both aggregate data for 94 standard metropolitan statistical areas (SMSAs) and disaggregate (or individual) data from the 1-in-100 Public Use Sample. Variation across SMSAs in the employment and wages of white youth provides indicators of the demand conditions for black youth, and we estimate that feasible increases in these demand factors would lead to about a 25% increase in the employment of black youth.