The narrowing of the wage gap between the mid-1970s and the early 2000s in most high-income economies was driven by smaller income differences between male and female labor market entrants, according to findings from the Center for Economic Policy Research.

The four economists — Jaime Arellano-Bover, Nicola Bianchi, Matteo Paradisi and Salvatore Lattanzio — focused on the US, Italy, Canada and the UK and found that the confluence stalled in the early 2000s and that the subsequent narrowing depended exclusively on the retirement of older cohorts with larger wage gaps.

“Even more disappointing is that the convergence in male and female admissions outcomes that persisted into the mid-1990s was not due to improved prospects for younger women,” they said. “But rather to disproportionately worse outcomes for younger men.”

Young men experienced significant “positional losses,” especially at higher-paying firms. The average wage for 25-year-old men in the U.S. fell to the 39th percentile of the wage distribution in 1995, down from the 50th percentile in 1976. Women in that age group remained stuck around the 30th percentile.

A key factor in the earnings gap remains the educational choices of men and women. About 63% of the gender wage gap for U.S. college graduates entering the labor market can be traced to college majors, and the disparity does not decline over the life cycle of a given age cohort, the study found.

That bodes ill for future wage inequality.

“In the best case, and in the absence of structural breaks in the labor market, the gender pay gap will converge to the level observed among recent entrants, a gap that remains economically significant,” the authors write. “We predict that the gender pay gap will not disappear in the high-income countries in our study.”

The research was conducted by three academics: Arellano-Bover of Yale, Bianchi of Northwestern and Paradisi of Einaudi. Lattanzio is an economist at the Bank of Italy.