IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jjieco/v24y2010i3p441-456.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

An empirical analysis of the gender earnings gap between the public and private sectors in Korea: A comparative study with the US

Author

Listed:
  • Cho, Donghun
  • Cho, Joonmo
  • Song, Bohwa

Abstract

This paper conducts an empirical analysis of the gender earnings gap in the public and private sectors by comparing the cases in Korea with those in the US. Using comparable data sets by the Panel Study of Income Dynamics for the US and the Korean Income Panel Study for Korea, this study decomposes the gender earnings gap in order to identify the causal factors. One of the main factors attributable to a much lower gender earnings gap found in the Korean public sector is the self-selection by female workers with high levels of human capital who decide to enter the public sector. Another factor is the differing levels of efforts made by institutions, in areas such as wage structure, the enforcement of gender equality related laws, and the provision of paid family leave, which may affect differently the gender earnings gap in the public and private sector jobs. The empirical results of this study suggest that the differing levels of institutional efforts lower the gender earnings gap within the Korean public sector.

Suggested Citation

  • Cho, Donghun & Cho, Joonmo & Song, Bohwa, 2010. "An empirical analysis of the gender earnings gap between the public and private sectors in Korea: A comparative study with the US," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 24(3), pages 441-456, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jjieco:v:24:y:2010:i:3:p:441-456
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0889-1583(10)00007-9
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Myeong-Su Yun, 2005. "A Simple Solution to the Identification Problem in Detailed Wage Decompositions," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 43(4), pages 766-772, October.
    2. 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 29-62, Suppl..
    3. Pederson, P. J. & Schmidt-Sorensen, J. B. & Smith, N. & Westergard-Nielsen, N., 1990. "Wage differentials between the public and private sectors," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(1), pages 125-145, February.
    4. Ronald L. Oaxaca & Michael R. Ransom, 1999. "Identification in Detailed Wage Decompositions," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 81(1), pages 154-157, February.
    5. Javier Gardeazabal & Arantza Ugidos, 2004. "More on Identification in Detailed Wage Decompositions," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 86(4), pages 1034-1036, November.
    6. Myeong‐Su Yun, 2009. "Wage Differentials, Discrimination And Inequality: A Cautionary Note On The Juhn, Murphy And Pierce Decomposition Method," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 56(1), pages 114-122, February.
    7. M. C. Berger & P. Groothuis & P. Jeon, 1997. "The changing gender wage gap in Korea," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 4(9), pages 579-582.
    8. William A. Darity & Patrick L. Mason, 1998. "Evidence on Discrimination in Employment: Codes of Color, Codes of Gender," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(2), pages 63-90, Spring.
    9. Smith, James P & Welch, Finis R, 1989. "Black Economic Progress after Myrdal," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 27(2), pages 519-564, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Chiang, Hui-Yu & Ohtake, Fumio, 2014. "Performance-pay and the gender wage gap in Japan," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 71-88.
    2. Hanna Jung & Joonmo Cho, 2016. "Quality of Jobs for Female Workers: A Comparative Study of South Korea and Australia," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 11(1), pages 1-22, March.
    3. Up Lim & Ye Choi & Heonyoung Lee, 2015. "Occupational skills and the gender wage gap in Seoul, Korea: a multilevel approach," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 55(2), pages 335-356, December.
    4. GholamReza Haddad, 2015. "Gender ratio, divorce rate, and intra-household collective decision process: evidence from iranian urban households labor supply with non-participation," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 48(4), pages 1365-1394, June.
    5. Joonmo Cho & Donghun Cho, 2011. "Gender difference of the informal sector wage gap: a longitudinal analysis for the Korean labor market," Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(4), pages 612-629.
    6. Cho, Joonmo & Lee, Tai & Jung, Hanna, 2014. "Glass ceiling in a stratified labor market: Evidence from Korea," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 56-70.
    7. Tromp, Nikolas, 2019. "The narrowing gender wage gap in South Korea," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 1-1.
    8. Tromp, Nikolas, 2016. "Decomposing the Gender Wage Gap Across the Wage Distribution: South Korea in 2003 vs. 2013," MPRA Paper 75123, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 08 Nov 2016.
    9. Joonmo Cho & Jaeseong Lee & Taehee Kwon, 2013. "Gender exclusion in social security protection: evidence from Korea," Asian-Pacific Economic Literature, Asia Pacific School of Economics and Government, The Australian National University, vol. 27(1), pages 62-78, May.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jjieco:v:24:y:2010:i:3:p:441-456. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Dana Niculescu). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/622903 .

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.