ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the balance between theoretical and analytic issues by describing approaches to analyzing labor market inequality based on different theoretical and methodological assumptions, data sources, measurement and analysis techniques. It examines choice of measurement strategies for labor market and similar spatial-locational concepts. The chapter argues that the key social structures for understanding inequality are households and labor markets. It also examines the association of household composition with women’s labor market experiences. The chapter discusses how the labor market experiences of women who are heads of household differ from women who are married. It considers the geography used to define labor market areas, the definition of labor market characteristics, and analysis issues that emerge when constructing multi-level models that include labor market measures. Households are organized both as residential and economic units. The concept of a labor market is used by social analysts to describe the push and pull of labor supply and demand.
