IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/aia/lower3/wp10.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Technological Change and Gender Wage Differentials

Author

Listed:
  • Simona Tick

    (Department of Economics, University of Mississippi)

  • Ronald Oaxaca

    (Department of Economics, University of Arizona)

Abstract

This paper investigates the impact of non-neutral technological change on the recent narrowing of the gender wage differentials. The relation between technological change and relative wages of female and male workers is modeled through a constant elasticity of substitution production function that incorporates male and female labor inputs by occupation in each industry, a non-labor input and a productivity parameter function that captures non-neutral technological change. Data from 1979 to 2001 on employment and wages by industry and occupation come from the Current Population Survey. Using non-linear two stage least squares with cross-equation restrictions, the estimated results provide evidence that non-neutral technological change partially explains the documented narrowing of the gender wage gap during the 1980s and 1990s, even after controlling for unexplained differences in gender relative wages. Specifically, changes in non-neutral technological change explain between 5 % and 9 % of the overall increase of women’s wages relative to men’s in the sample. The strongest effect is found for the highest pay occupation level, while the smallest effect is found for the lower pay occupations. Finally, this paper brings evidence that ignoring the unexplained component of the gender wage differentials could result in a biased estimation of the effect on non-neutral technological change on the gender wage gap.

Suggested Citation

  • Simona Tick & Ronald Oaxaca, 2005. "Technological Change and Gender Wage Differentials," LoWER Working Papers wp10, AIAS, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies.
    • Handle: RePEc:aia:lower3:wp10
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www1.feb.uva.nl/aias/WP10-05-oaxaca-1.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Francine D. Blau & Lawrence M. Kahn, 2000. "Gender Differences in Pay," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 14(4), pages 75-99, Fall.
    2. Blau, Francine D & Kahn, Lawrence M, 1997. "Swimming Upstream: Trends in the Gender Wage Differential in 1980s," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 15(1), pages 1-42, January.
    3. George J. Borjas & Valerie A. Ramey, 1995. "Foreign Competition, Market Power, and Wage Inequality," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 110(4), pages 1075-1110.
    4. Blau, Francine D & Kahn, Lawrence M, 1994. "Rising Wage Inequality and the U.S. Gender Gap," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(2), pages 23-28, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ben Sand & Chris Bidner, 2016. "Job Prospects and Pay Gaps: Theory and Evidence on the Gender Gap from U.S. Cities," Discussion Papers dp16-14, Department of Economics, Simon Fraser University.
    2. Mohammad Ashraf, 2009. "Characteristics of female managers in the US labour market," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(17), pages 1683-1686.
    3. Tugce, Cuhadaroglu, 2013. "My Group Beats Your Group: Evaluating Non-Income Inequalities," SIRE Discussion Papers 2013-49, Scottish Institute for Research in Economics (SIRE).
    4. Tobol, Yossef & Bar-El, Ronen & Arbel, Yuval & Azar, Ofer H., 2019. "Gender Differences in the Effect of Employee-Manager Friendships on Salary Dynamics in CPA Firms," IZA Discussion Papers 12707, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/9081 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Ross Levine & Alexey Levkov & Yona Rubinstein, 2008. "Racial Discrimination and Competition," NBER Working Papers 14273, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Adam Isen & Betsey Stevenson, 2010. "Women's Education and Family Behavior: Trends in Marriage, Divorce and Fertility," NBER Chapters, in: Demography and the Economy, pages 107-140, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Sandra E. Black & Elizabeth Brainerd, 2004. "Importing Equality? The Impact of Globalization on Gender Discrimination," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 57(4), pages 540-559, July.
    9. T. Paul Schultz, 2006. "Does the Liberalization of Trade Advance Gender Equality in Schooling and Health?," Working Papers 935, Economic Growth Center, Yale University.
    10. Liu, Xueyue & Zuo, Sharon Xuejing, 2023. "From equality to polarization: Changes in urban China’s gender earnings gap from 1988 to 2016," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 205(C), pages 303-337.
    11. Angelov, Nikolay & Johansson, Per & Lindahl, Erica, 2013. "Is the persistent gender gap in income and wages due to unequal family responsibilities?," Working Paper Series, Center for Labor Studies 2013:3, Uppsala University, Department of Economics.
    12. Mohammad Ashraf, 2007. "Factors Affecting Female Employment In Male‐Dominated Occupations: Evidence From The 1990 And 2000 Census Data," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 25(1), pages 119-130, January.
    13. Francine D. Blau & Lawrence M. Kahn, 2006. "The U.S. Gender Pay Gap in the 1990S: Slowing Convergence," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 60(1), pages 45-66, October.
    14. Anthony B. Atkinson & Alessandra Casarico & Sarah Voitchovsky, 2018. "Top incomes and the gender divide," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 16(2), pages 225-256, June.
    15. Niels-Hugo Blunch, 2018. "Just like a woman? New comparative evidence on the gender income gap across Eastern Europe and Central Asia," IZA Journal of Migration and Development, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 8(1), pages 1-41, December.
    16. Antonczyk, Dirk & Fitzenberger, Bernd & Sommerfeld, Katrin, 2010. "Rising wage inequality, the decline of collective bargaining, and the gender wage gap," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(5), pages 835-847, October.
    17. Dougherty, Christopher, 2003. "Why is the rate of return to schooling higher for women than for men?," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 20034, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    18. Estrin, Saul & Stephan, Ute & Vujic, Suncica, 2014. "Do Women Earn Less Even as Social Entrepreneurs?," IZA Discussion Papers 8650, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    19. Günalp, Burak & Cilasun, Seyit Mümin & Acar, Elif Öznur, 2013. "Male-Female Labor Market Participation and the Extent of Gender-Based Wage Discrimination in Turkey," MPRA Paper 51503, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Razzolini, Tiziano & Leombruni, Roberto & Mastrobuoni, Giovanni & Pagliero, Mario, 2014. "Beneath the surface: The decline in gender injury gap," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 282-288.
    21. 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.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:aia:lower3:wp10. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 bibliographic 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.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiemer Salverda (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aiuvanl.html .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.