IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cdf/wpaper/2014-23.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Gender Wage Gap Trends in Europe: The Role of Occupational Allocation and Skill Prices

Author

Listed:

Abstract

In this paper, we explore the recent gender wage gap trends in a sample of European countries with a new approach that uses the direct measures of skill requirements of jobs held by men and women. We find that, during the 1990s and 2000s, the gender wage gap declined in the majority of the European countries. Similar to the U.S. experience, a part of this decline is explained by changes in returns to brain and brawn skills in Austria and in the U.K. However, in contrast to the U.S. experience, the changes in returns to brain and brawn skills had a widening effect on the gender wage gap in Southern European countries and in Ireland?. Furthermore, we find that a substantial part of the changes in the gender wage gaps in European countries and in the U.S. cannot be explained by the changes in brain and brawn skill prices. The findings of this study suggest the importance of changes in labor market institutions in explaining the gender wage gap trends.

Suggested Citation

  • Kaya, Ezgi, 2014. "Gender Wage Gap Trends in Europe: The Role of Occupational Allocation and Skill Prices," Cardiff Economics Working Papers E2014/23, Cardiff University, Cardiff Business School, Economics Section.
  • Handle: RePEc:cdf:wpaper:2014/23
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://carbsecon.com/wp/E2014_23.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Borghans, Lex & Weel, Bas ter & Weinberg, Bruce A., 2005. "People People: Social Capital and the Labor-Market - Outcomes of Underrepresented Groups," Research Memorandum 002, Maastricht University, Maastricht Economic Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT).
    2. Lawrence F. Katz & Kevin M. Murphy, 1992. "Changes in Relative Wages, 1963–1987: Supply and Demand Factors," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 107(1), pages 35-78.
    3. 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.
    4. Maarten Goos & Alan Manning & Anna Salomons, 2009. "Job Polarization in Europe," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(2), pages 58-63, May.
    5. Boeri, Tito & Del Boca, Daniela & Pissarides, Christopher (ed.), 2005. "Women at Work: An Economic Perspective," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199281886.
    6. Nezih Guner & Ezgi Kaya & Virginia Sánchez-Marcos, 2014. "Gender gaps in Spain: policies and outcomes over the last three decades," SERIEs: Journal of the Spanish Economic Association, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 5(1), pages 61-103, March.
    7. Marigee P. Bacolod & Bernardo S. Blum, 2010. "Two Sides of the Same Coin: U.S. "Residual" Inequality and the Gender Gap," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 45(1).
    8. Sandra E. Black & Alexandra Spitz-Oener, 2010. "Explaining Women's Success: Technological Change and the Skill Content of Women's Work," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 92(1), pages 187-194, February.
    9. Claudia Olivetti & Barbara Petrongolo, 2008. "Unequal Pay or Unequal Employment? A Cross-Country Analysis of Gender Gaps," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 26(4), pages 621-654, October.
    10. 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.
    11. David H. Autor & Michael J. Handel, 2013. "Putting Tasks to the Test: Human Capital, Job Tasks, and Wages," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 31(S1), pages 59-96.
    12. David H. Autor & Frank Levy & Richard J. Murnane, 2003. "The skill content of recent technological change: an empirical exploration," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue Nov.
    13. Charles F. Manski, 1989. "Anatomy of the Selection Problem," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 24(3), pages 343-360.
    14. Juan José Dolado & Florentino Felgueroso & Juan F. Jimeno, "undated". "Explaining Youth Labor Market Problems in Spain: Crowding-Out, Institutions, or Technology Shifts?," Working Papers 2000-09, FEDEA.
    15. Astrid Kunze, 2008. "Gender wage gap studies: consistency and decomposition," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 35(1), pages 63-76, August.
    16. Juhn, Chinhui & Murphy, Kevin M & Pierce, Brooks, 1993. "Wage Inequality and the Rise in Returns to Skill," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 101(3), pages 410-442, June.
    17. Gubta, Nabanita Datta & Oaxaca, Ronald L. & Smith, Nina, 2002. "Swimming Upstream, Floating Downstream: Trends in the U.S. and Danish Gender Wage Gaps," CLS Working Papers 01-6, University of Aarhus, Aarhus School of Business, Centre for Labour Market and Social Research.
    18. Finis Welch, 2000. "Growth in Women's Relative Wages and in Inequality among Men: One Phenomenon or Two?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(2), pages 444-449, May.
    19. Suen, Wing, 1997. "Decomposing Wage Residuals: Unmeasured Skill or Statistical Artifact?," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 15(3), pages 555-566, July.
    20. A. D. Roy, 1951. "Some Thoughts On The Distribution Of Earnings," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 3(2), pages 135-146.
    21. Amuedo-Dorantes, Catalina & de la Rica, Sara, 2011. "Complements or substitutes? Task specialization by gender and nativity in Spain," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(5), pages 697-707, October.
    22. Heckman, James, 2013. "Sample selection bias as a specification error," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 31(3), pages 129-137.
    23. Maarten Goos & Alan Manning, 2007. "Lousy and Lovely Jobs: The Rising Polarization of Work in Britain," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 89(1), pages 118-133, February.
    24. Ortega, Francesc & Polavieja, Javier G., 2012. "Labor-market exposure as a determinant of attitudes toward immigration," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 298-311.
    25. repec:eee:labchp:v:1:y:1986:i:c:p:525-602 is not listed on IDEAS
    26. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/9081 is not listed on IDEAS
    27. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/9081 is not listed on IDEAS
    28. Shoshana Neuman & Ronald Oaxaca, 2004. "Wage Decompositions with Selectivity-Corrected Wage Equations: A Methodological Note," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 2(1), pages 3-10, April.
    29. Casey B. Mulligan & Yona Rubinstein, 2008. "Selection, Investment, and Women's Relative Wages Over Time," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 123(3), pages 1061-1110.
    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. Melanie Jones & Ezgi Kaya, 2022. "The gender pay gap: what can we learn from Northern Ireland? [Women’s labour market participation in Northern Ireland: a re-examination of the ‘traditionalism’ argument]," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 74(1), pages 94-114.
    2. Ines P. Murillo Huertas & Raul Ramos & Hipolito Simon, 2017. "Regional Differences in the Gender Wage Gap in Spain," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 134(3), pages 981-1008, December.

    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. Ezgi Kaya, 2023. "Gender wage gap trends in Europe: The role of occupational skill prices," International Labour Review, International Labour Organization, vol. 162(3), pages 385-405, September.
    2. David J. Deming, 2017. "The Growing Importance of Social Skills in the Labor Market," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 132(4), pages 1593-1640.
    3. 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.
    4. Sonja C. Kassenboehmer & Mathias G. Sinning, 2014. "Distributional Changes in the Gender Wage Gap," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 67(2), pages 335-361, April.
    5. Shintaro Yamaguchi, 2013. "Changes in Returns to Task-Specific Skills and Gender Wage Gap," Global COE Hi-Stat Discussion Paper Series gd12-275, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University.
    6. Ortega, Javier & Verdugo, Gregory, 2014. "The impact of immigration on the French labor market: Why so different?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 14-27.
    7. Elizabeth J. Casabianca & Alessia Lo Turco & Claudia Pigini, 2019. "Import penetration and returns to tasks: recent evidence from the Peruvian labour market," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 56(2), pages 551-617, February.
    8. Martin Huber & Anna Solovyeva, 2020. "On the Sensitivity of Wage Gap Decompositions," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 41(1), pages 1-33, June.
    9. Claudia Olivetti, 2008. "Gender and the Labour Market: An International Perspective and the Case of Italy," Rivista di Politica Economica, SIPI Spa, vol. 98(3), pages 3-32, May-June.
    10. Claudia Olivetti & Barbara Petrongolo, 2008. "Unequal Pay or Unequal Employment? A Cross-Country Analysis of Gender Gaps," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 26(4), pages 621-654, October.
    11. Claudia Olivetti & Barbara Petrongolo, 2011. "Gender Gaps Across Countries and Skills: Supply, Demand and the Industry Structure," CEP Discussion Papers dp1093, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    12. Bhalotra, Sonia & Fernandez Sierra, Manuel, 2018. "The distribution of the gender wage gap," ISER Working Paper Series 2018-10, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    13. repec:pri:indrel:dsp01gb19f581g is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Koomen, Miriam & Backes-Gellner, Uschi, 2022. "Occupational tasks and wage inequality in West Germany: A decomposition analysis," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    15. Lex Borghans & Bas Ter Weel & Bruce A. Weinberg, 2014. "People Skills and the Labor-Market Outcomes of Underrepresented Groups," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 67(2), pages 287-334, April.
    16. Fortin, Nicole & Lemieux, Thomas & Firpo, Sergio, 2011. "Decomposition Methods in Economics," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 1, pages 1-102, Elsevier.
    17. Elizabeth J. Casabianca & Alessia Lo Turco & Claudia Pigini, 2020. "Equal Pay for Equal Task: Assessing Heterogeneous Returns to Tasks across Genders," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(2), pages 197-239, April.
    18. Salverda, Wiemer & Checchi, Daniele, 2014. "Labour-Market Institutions and the Dispersion of Wage Earnings," IZA Discussion Papers 8220, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    19. Fonseca, Tiago & Lima, Francisco & Pereira, Sonia C., 2018. "Job polarization, technological change and routinization: Evidence for Portugal," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 317-339.
    20. Etheridge, Ben & Cavaglia, Chiara, 2017. "Job polarization, task prices and the distribution of task returns," ISER Working Paper Series 2017-09, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    21. Michael Bar & Seik Kim & Oksana Leukhina, 2015. "Gender Wage Gap Accounting: The Role of Selection Bias," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 52(5), pages 1729-1750, October.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Gender wage gap; brain skills; brawn skills; decomposition;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • J71 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - Hiring and Firing

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:cdf:wpaper:2014/23. 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: Yongdeng Xu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ecscfuk.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.