Gender pay gap: a route from the North to the South of Italy

This paper analyzes the gender pay gap across different regions in Italy, using the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition method. We expect regional heterogeneity, both in terms of the gender pay gap and in its determinants. Our results show that, on a regional basis, the retribution gap widely varies, as its percentages of the explained and unexplained parts. Workers’ observable characteristics, related to both labor and personal features, that justify the explained part at a national level are confirmed by the regional data. Furthermore, data on the activity rate show that both at a national and regional level, female participation to the labor market, although it has been improving in recent years, is still profoundly lower than the male one. Therefore, we implement the Heckman correction, which reveals that women’s model coefficients are overestimated, at a national level and in half of the Italian regions. This result suggests that, although female participation in the labor market is lower than the male one, the fewer women participating in the labor market, on average, have higher productivity than men.