IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mtu/wpaper/25_06.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Ethnic wage differences in Aotearoa New Zealand

Author

Listed:
  • Benison Thomas

    (Motu Economic and Public Policy Research)

  • David Maré

    (Motu Economic and Public Policy Research)

Abstract

Ethnic wage gaps are a substantial and persistent issue in New Zealand. Understanding the drivers of such gaps is key to understanding the economic, social, and institutional factors that contribute to labour market inequality and to identifying measures to reduce gaps. Using household survey data from 2009 to 2023, this study implements a version of the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition method to examine the sources of ethnic wage gaps in New Zealand. Our results confirm the pattern of disadvantage previously documented for non-European ethnic groups. Differences in demographic, educational, and job characteristics account for substantial portions of the wage gaps for M?ori, Pacific, and European groups. After accounting for differences in mean characteristics, sizeable wage gaps remain, providing insight into the degree of ethnic labour market disadvantage that is due to unobservable characteristics or broader systemic factors.

Suggested Citation

  • Benison Thomas & David Maré, 2025. "Ethnic wage differences in Aotearoa New Zealand," Working Papers 25_06, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:mtu:wpaper:25_06
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://motu-www.motu.org.nz/wpapers/25_06.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • J30 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - General
    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J71 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - Hiring and Firing

    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:mtu:wpaper:25_06. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Maxine Watene (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/motuenz.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.