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The British Birth Cohort Studies of 1946 and 1958 have provided employment for many academic researchers. The data, collected originally for more than 30,000 babies at the two time points, have been plundered for the health consequences of childhood conditions, the results of divorce, processes of family formation, inter-generational income continuities, and a kaleidoscope of studies on the relationships between employment, income and parenthood. Perhaps the most rewarding finding is the dedication of the researched to repeated inquiries about their welfare: the 1946 cohort has been followed up on 19 occasions, and the 1958 on six, with response rates ranging from 73 per cent to 96 per cent.

This book is about gender and pay. It uses information provided by the 1946 sample around the time of their 32nd birthdays in 1978 and by the 1958 sample in 1991, when they were 33 - in total about 14,800 young men and women. The analysis focuses on two questions: what were the relative earnings positions of men and women in 1978 and 1991, and what explains these? A unique feature of datasets such as these is the ability to draw on detailed employment and social histories in plotting explanatory models. The data sources thus make it possible, at least in theory, to examine the relative inputs of "human capital" (how qualified people are), their caring responsibilities (which mainly boil down to the unequal weights of motherhood and fatherhood), and features of the job market itself.

The analysis is complicated and the text is not as clear as it could have been - but the message is simple. Women earned less than men in similar jobs in 1978, and this was still true in 1991. The differential was about 60 per cent in 1978 and about 40 per cent in 1991. (The authors use the somewhat unfamiliar convention of calculating the difference as a percentage of women's rather than of men's earnings.) Today men are paid almost Pounds 1.50 for every Pounds 1 paid to the average employed women. The 1958 cohort of women was better qualified than its counterpart in 1946. But what the authors call "the gender premium" - the earnings difference unaccounted for by explanatory variables such as education and employment history - still operated: in 1991 employed women earned about a quarter less than men for comparable jobs.

Such conclusions depend on the quality of the analysis's theorising and statistical manipulations. The authors note that their results are equally compatible with there having been no change in women's earnings relative to men's since the late 1970s, when sex-discrimination and equal-pay legislation ought to have been having an impact. This is a book aimed at economic specialists and those more generally interested in women's position; but whoever you are, the story is not an encouraging one.

Ann Oakley is director, Social Science Research Unit, Institute of Education, University of London.