What Drives the Gender Wage Gap? Examining the Roles of Sorting, Productivity Differences, Bargaining and Discrimination

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-44
Author(s):  
Isabelle Sin ◽  
Steven Stillman ◽  
Richard Fabling
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Time Variation ◽  
Gender Wage Gap ◽  
Wage Gap ◽  
Relative Contribution ◽  
Percentage Points ◽  
Taste Discrimination ◽  
Employee Data ◽  
Over Time

As in other OECD countries, women in New Zealand earn substantially less than men with similar observable characteristics. In this paper, we use fifteen years of linked employer-employee data to examine different explanations for this gender wage gap. We find an overall gender wage gap between 20 and 28 percent, of which gender differences in sorting across occupations explain 9, across industries 16 to 19, and across firms 5 to 9 percent, respectively. The remaining within-firm gender wage gap is still between 13 and 17 percent. Around 5 percentage points of this are explained by women being less willing to bargain or less successful at bargaining to capture firm-specific rents. Gender differences in productivity also explain at most 4.5 percentage points of this remaining gap. These results suggest that taste discrimination is also important for explaining why women are paid less than their relative contribution to firm output. Across-industry and over-time variation in the gender wage-productivity gap further support this conclusion.

scholarly journals Gender Differences in Job Search: Trading off COMMUTE AGAINST WAGE*

2020 ◽  
Vol 136 (1) ◽  
pp. 381-426 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Le Barbanchon ◽  
Roland Rathelot ◽  
Alexandra Roulet
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
Gender Gap ◽  
Job Search ◽  
Gender Wage Gap ◽  
Wage Gap ◽  
Hourly Wage ◽  
Job Attributes ◽  
Joint Distributions ◽  
Application Data ◽  
Newly Hired

ABSTRACT We relate gender differences in willingness to commute to the gender wage gap. Using French administrative data on job search criteria, we first document that unemployed women have a lower reservation wage and a shorter maximum acceptable commute than their male counterparts. We identify indifference curves between wage and commute using the joint distributions of reservation job attributes and accepted job bundles. Indifference curves are steeper for women, who value commute around 20% more than men. Controlling in particular for the previous job, newly hired women are paid after unemployment 4% less per hour and have a 12% shorter commute than men. Through the lens of a job search model where commuting matters, we estimate that gender differences in commute valuation can account for a 0.5 log point hourly wage deficit for women, that is, 14% of the residualized gender wage gap. Finally, we use job application data to test the robustness of our results and to show that female workers do not receive less demand from far-away employers, confirming that most of the gender gap in commute is supply-side driven.

scholarly journals The trend over time of the gender wage gap in Italy

2013 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 1081-1110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chiara Mussida ◽  
Matteo Picchio
Keyword(s):  
Gender Wage Gap ◽  
Wage Gap ◽  
Over Time

scholarly journals The distribution of the gender wage gap in Austria: evidence from matched employer-employee data and tax records

2012 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
René Böheim ◽  
Klemens Himpele ◽  
Helmut Mahringer ◽  
Christine Zulehner
Keyword(s):  
Gender Wage Gap ◽  
Wage Gap ◽  
Employee Data

scholarly journals The Gender Wage Gap in Developed Countries

2017 ◽  
pp. 368-394 ◽  
Author(s):  
Astrid Kunze
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
Human Capital ◽  
Gender Wage Gap ◽  
Wage Gap ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Gender Pay Gap ◽  
Demand Side ◽  
Pay Gap ◽  
On Demand ◽  
Employment Rates

Despite the increased attachment of women to the labor force in nearly all developed countries, a stubborn gender pay gap remains. This chapter provides a review of the economics literature on the gender wage gap, with an emphasis on developed countries. We begin with an overview of the trends in the gender differences in wages and employment rates. We then review methods used to decompose the gender wage gap and the results from such decompositions. We discuss how trends and differences in the gender wage gap across countries can be understood in light of nonrandom selection and human capital differences. We then review the evidence on demand-side factors used to explain the existing gender wage gap and then discuss occupational segregation. The chapter concludes with suggestions for further research.

scholarly journals The Gender Wage Gap in Switzerland over Time

2016 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 442-467 ◽  
Author(s):  
Flurina Schmid
Keyword(s):  
Wage Differentials ◽  
Gender Wage Gap ◽  
Wage Gap ◽  
Occupational Segregation ◽  
Part Time ◽  
Female Employees ◽  
Male Dominated ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Gender Wage Differentials ◽  
Over Time

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.

Does the Level of Occupational Aggregation Affect Estimates of the Gender Wage Gap?

ILR Review ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-329 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael P. Kidd ◽  
Michael Shannon
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Gender Wage Gap ◽  
Wage Gap ◽  
Market Activity ◽  
Occupational Differences ◽  
Measure Of Discrimination ◽  
Labour Market Activity ◽  
Related Characteristic ◽  
Activity Survey

The traditional decomposition of the gender wage gap distinguishes between a component attributable to gender differences in productivity-related characteristics and a residual component that is often taken as a measure of discrimination. This study of data from the 1989 Canadian Labour Market Activity Survey shows that when occupation is treated as a productivity-related characteristic, the proportion of the gender wage gap labeled explained increases with the number of occupational classifications distinguished. However, on the basis of evidence that occupational differences reflect the presence of barriers faced by women attempting to enter male-dominated occupations, the authors conclude that occupation should not be treated as a productivity-related characteristic; and in a decomposition of the gender wage gap that treats occupation as endogenously determined, they find that the level of occupational aggregation has little effect on the size of the “explained” component of the gap.

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