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Unequal pay or unequal employment? A cross-country analysis of gender gaps

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Author Info
Claudia Olivetti () (Department of Economics, Boston University)
Barbara Petrongolo (London School of Economics CEP, CEPR and IZA)

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Abstract

There is substantial international variation in gender pay gaps, from 25-30% in the US and the UK, to 10-20% in a number of central and northern EU countries, down to an average of 10% in southern EU. We argue that non-random selection of women into work across countries may explain part of such variation. This ides is supported by the observed variation in employment gaps, from 10% in the US, UK and Scandinavian countries, to 15-25% in northern and central EU, up to 30-40% in southern EU and Ireland. If women who are employed tend to have relatively high-wage characteristics, low female employment rates may become consistent with low gender wage gaps simply because low-wage women would not feature in the observed wage distribution. We explore this idea across the US and EU countries estimating gender gaps in potential wages. In order to do this, we recover information on wages for those not in work in a given year by simply making assumptions on the position of the imputed wage observations with respect to the median, not on the actual level. Imputation is based on wage observations from nearest available waves in the sample and/or observable characteristics of the nonemployed. We estimate median wage gaps on the resulting imputed wage distributions. Our estimates for 1999 deliver higher median wage gaps on imputed rather than actual wage distributions for most countries in the sample, meaning that, as one would have expected, women tend on average to be more positively selected into work than men. However, this di¤erence is tiny or virtually zero in the US and northern and central EU countries (except Ireland), and becomes sizeable in Ireland, France and southern EU, all countries in which gender employment gaps are high. In particular, in Spain, Portugal and Greece the median wage gap on the imputed wage distribution reaches 20 log points, a closely comparable level to that of the UK and other central and northern EU countries.

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Paper provided by Boston University - Department of Economics in its series Boston University - Department of Economics - Working Papers Series with number WP2005-008.

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Length: 43 pages
Date of creation: Mar 2005
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Handle: RePEc:bos:wpaper:wp2005-008

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  19. Blau, Francine D & Kahn, Lawrence M, 1996. "Wage Structure and Gender Earnings Differentials: An International Comparison," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 63(250), pages S29-62, Suppl.. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  22. Heinze, Anja & Beninger, Denis & Beblo, Miriam & Laisney, François, 2003. "Measuring Selectivity-Corrected Gender Wage Gaps in the EU," ZEW Discussion Papers 03-74, ZEW - Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung / Center for European Economic Research. [Downloadable!]
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Full references

Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Sandra E. Black & Alexandra Spitz-Oener, 2007. "Explaining Women's Success: Technological Change and the Skill Content of Women's Work," NBER Working Papers 13116, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  2. Tindara ADDABBO & Donata Favaro, 2007. "Education and wage differentials by gender in Italy," CHILD Working Papers wp04_07, CHILD - Centre for Household, Income, Labour and Demographic economics - ITALY. [Downloadable!]
  3. de la Rica, Sara & Dolado, Juan José & García-Peñalosa, Cecilia, 2008. "On Gender Gaps and Self-fulfilling Expectations: Theory, Policies and Some Empirical Evidence," IZA Discussion Papers 3553, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  4. Chen, Natalie & Conconi, Paola & Perroni, Carlo, 2007. "Does Migration Empower Married Women?," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 812, University of Warwick, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  5. Luís Delfim Santos & José Varejão, 2006. "Employment, Pay and Discrimination in the Tourism Industry," FEP Working Papers 205, Universidade do Porto, Faculdade de Economia do Porto. [Downloadable!]
  6. Natalie Chen & Paola Conconi & Carlo Perroni, 2007. "Women's Earning Power and the "Double Burden" of Market and Household Work," SOEPpapers 20, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  7. Dragana Djurdjevic & Sergiy Radyakin, 2007. "Decomposition of the Gender Wage Gap Using Matching: An Application for Switzerland," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES), vol. 143(IV), pages 365-396, December. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  8. Pedro Carneiro & Sokbae 'Simon' Lee, 2009. "Trends in quality-adjusted skill premia in the United States, 1960-2000," CeMMAP working papers CWP02/09, Centre for Microdata Methods and Practice, Institute for Fiscal Studies. [Downloadable!]
  9. Tomas Kögel, 2006. "An explanation of the positive correlation between fertility and female employment across Western European countries," Discussion Paper Series 2006_11, Department of Economics, Loughborough University. [Downloadable!]
  10. Claudia Olivetti, . "Gender and the Labour Market: An International Perspective and the case of Italy," Boston University - Department of Economics - Working Papers Series wp2009-010, Boston University - Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
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