scholarly journals Do Male-Female Wage Differentials Reflect Differences in the Return to Skill? Cross-City Evidence from 1980–2000

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 178-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Beaudry ◽  
Ethan Lewis

Male-female wage gaps declined significantly over the 1980s and 1990s, while returns to education increased. In this paper, we use cross-city data to explore whether, like the return to education, the change in the gender wage gap may reflect changes in skill prices induced by the diffusion of information technology. We show that male-female and education-wage differentials moved in opposite directions in response to the adoption of PCs. Our most credible estimates imply that changes in skill prices driven by PC adoption can explain most of the decline in the US male-female wage gap since 1980. (JEL J15, J24, J31, J71, O33, R23)

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 106-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mustafizur Rahman ◽  
Md. Al-Hasan

This article undertakes an examination of Bangladesh’s latest available Quarterly Labour Force Survey 2015–2016 data to draw in-depth insights on gender wage gap and wage discrimination in Bangladesh labour market. The mean wage decomposition shows that on average a woman in Bangladesh earns 12.2 per cent lower wage than a man, and about half of the wage gap can be explained by labour market discrimination against women. Quantile counterfactual decomposition shows that women are subject to higher wage penalty at the lower deciles of the wage distribution with the wage gap varying between 8.3 per cent and 19.4 per cent at different deciles. We have found that at lower deciles, a significant part of the gender wage gap is on account of the relatively larger presence of informal employment. Conditional quantile estimates further reveal that formally employed female workers earn higher wage than their male counterparts at the first decile but suffer from wage penalty at the top deciles. JEL: C21, J31, J46, J70


2020 ◽  
pp. 095001702093793
Author(s):  
Eleonora Matteazzi ◽  
Stefani Scherer

Women still earn less than men and continue to perform the bulk of domestic activities. Several studies documented a negative individual wage–housework relation, suggesting that gender discrepancies in housework may explain the gender wage gap. Less attention has been paid to the role of the partner’s unpaid work and to the extent that intra-household inequalities relate to inequalities outside the house. The present study attempts to fill this gap in the literature. We exploit EU-SILC 2010 data for Germany and Italy and PSID 2009 data for the US. Results suggest the importance of accounting for a partner’s housework when evaluating the determinants of individual wages and the gender wage gap. Women seem not to profit from their partners’ housework; instead, women’s non-market work increases their partners’ earnings while decreasing their own earnings. This suggests the importance of reducing women’s involvement in domestic work in order to close gender wage equalities.


2017 ◽  
Vol 62 (02) ◽  
pp. 423-445 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALMAS HESHMATI ◽  
BIWEI SU

This paper estimates the gender wage gap and its composition in China’s urban labor market. The traditional Blinder–Oaxaca (1973) decomposition method with different weighing systems is employed. To correct for potential selection bias caused by women’s labor force participation, we employ the Heckman’s two-step procedure to estimate the female wage function. A large proportion of the gender wage gap is unexplained by differences of productive characteristics of individuals. Even though women have higher level of education attainments on average, they receive lower wages than men. Both facts suggest a potential discrimination against women in China.


ILR Review ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Fields ◽  
Edward N. Wolff

Using data from the March 1988 Current Population Survey, the authors find that the wages of female workers differ significantly by industry, even when the analysis controls for workers' productivity-related characteristics. Although these interindustry wage differentials are at least as large as men's and are highly correlated with them as well, there are statistically significant differences between the two. Of the overall gender wage gap (the average female worker earns about 65% as much as the average male worker), 12–22% can be explained by differences between the patterns of interindustry wage differentials of men and women and 15–19% by differences in the distribution of male and female workers across industries. Thus, the combined industry effects explain about one-third of the overall gender wage gap.


2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 378-397 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pawel Strawinski ◽  
Aleksandra Majchrowska ◽  
Paulina Broniatowska

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyse the relation between occupational segregation and the gender wage differences using data on three-digit occupational level of classification. The authors examine whether a statistically significant relation between the share of men in employment and the size of the unexplained part of the gender wage gap exists. Design/methodology/approach Traditional Oaxaca (1973) – Blinder (1973) decomposition is performed to examine the differences in the gender wage gaps among minor occupational groups. Two types of reweighted decomposition – based on the parametric estimate of the propensity score and non-parametric proposition presented by Barsky et al. (2002) – are used as the robustness check. The analysis is based on individual data available from Poland. Findings The results indicate no strong relation between occupational segregation and the size of unexplained differences in wages. The unexplained wage differences are the smallest in strongly female-dominated and mixed occupations; the highest are observed in male-dominated occupations. However, they are probably to a large extent the result of other, difficult to include in the econometric model, factors rather than the effects of wage discrimination: differences in the psychophysical conditions of men and women, cultural background, tradition or habits. The failure to take them into account may result in over-interpreting the unexplained parts as gender discrimination. Research limitations/implications The highest accuracy of the estimated gender wage gap is obtained for the occupational groups with a similar proportion of men and women in employment. In other male- or female-dominated groups, the size of the estimated gender wage gaps depends on the estimation method used. Practical implications The results suggest that decreasing the degree of segregation of men and women in different occupations could reduce the wage differences between them, as the wage discrimination in gender balanced occupations is the smallest. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the few conducted at such a disaggregated level of occupations, and one of few studies focused on Central and Eastern European countries and the first one for Poland.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 28-43
Author(s):  
Hay Chanthol ◽  

This paper mainly estimates the returns to education employing the standard Mincerian function using the latest Cambodian labor force survey 2012, where the dependent variable is the natural logarithm of earnings and independent variables include years of schooling or educational attainment and potential experience. The paper also examines the effect of foreign language skills on earnings. This paper is divided into three sections. The first section examines Cambodia’s labor markets. The second section explores the econometric model, in particular, Mincerian function to estimate returns to education using the latest labor force survey conducted in 2012. We find that for employed persons with an educational level lower than or equal to grade 12 it is about 3.3 percent; but it is higher for males. The annualized rate of return to education for undergraduate level was approximately 17 percent. Regarding language skill, we find that people who hold a bachelor degree and can speak English can earn more than those who can speak only Khmer language. There is also a significant wage gap between bachelor holders and high school certificate holders at a ratio of 1.9.


Contexts ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig Upright

The story of wage gaps in American labor is generally a story of improvement, but by separating data by cohort to follow women by age group across decades, we can spot persistent wage gaps–and even some that are widening.


2016 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 442-467 ◽  
Author(s):  
Flurina Schmid

Abstracts This article analyzes the gender wage gap in Switzerland, using data from the Swiss Household Panel. The results show that women in Switzerland earn still less than men with the same endowments. One of the main reasons for this gap is occupational segregation: women and men working in femaledominated occupations have lower wages than those in integrated and male-dominated occupations. In order to have equally distributed job categories, 40% of the male or female employees would need to change jobs. But the “preferences” for jobs between genders seem to have been frozen for decades. The gender wage gap is particularly large within part-time employees working below 50%. Younger cohorts, however, seem less exposed to gender wage differentials.


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