Residential location and the male-female gap in labor market outcomes—a lesson from newcomers to israel

We estimated two dynamic programing models, one for men and one for women, on a sample of immigrants who arrived in Israel from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) between 1989 and 1995. Following the literature, we assume that the household maximizes its expected utility based only on the husband’ s human capital. Therefore, the family’s residential location decision is based on the husband’s labor market opportunities. We study the potential effect of this assumed behavior on the labor market’ s gender gaps. In the model estimated for men, we endogenize the decisions regarding residential location, employment location, and occupational choices. In contrast, in the model estimated for women the family’s residential location is taken as given. Using the estimated parameters from the two models and a number of counterfactual simulations, we are able to decompose the observed gender wage gap into two parts–one based on behavioral differences and the other based on the lower labor market returns for women. The simulations indicate that if women had the same labor market returns and the same preferences as men, their outcomes would have been similar to those of men. Moreover, the simulations show that even without any changes in their labor market conditions, women would have gained in terms of both job quality and wages if the family’s residential location was based on their human capital.