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Job Mobility and the Gender Wage Gap in Italy

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Abstract

This paper investigates the way in which job mobility contributes to the emergence of a gender wage gap in the Italian labour market. We show that men experience higher wage growth than women during the first 10 years of their career, and that this difference is particularly large when workers move across firms. This gender mobility penalty is robust to the inclusion of individual, job and firm characteristics, to different ways of accounting for individual unobserved heterogeneity, and is mainly found for voluntary job moves. Exploring the wage growth of job movers, we find that a significant gender wage penalty emerges when workers move to larger firms. This might be explained by the fact that bigger establishments offer jobs more highly valued by women than men or that the relationship between job satisfaction and firm size is less negative for women than men. Using data on job satisfaction, we find evidence for the latter hypothesis as well as some indication that wages and fringe benefits compensate for lower levels of job satisfaction in larger firms, but that this is so only for men.

Suggested Citation

  • Emilia Del Bono & Daniela Vuri, 2008. "Job Mobility and the Gender Wage Gap in Italy," CEIS Research Paper 130, Tor Vergata University, CEIS, revised 06 Nov 2008.
    • Handle: RePEc:rtv:ceisrp:130
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    Cited by:

    1. Daniela Piazzalunga & Maria Laura Di Tommaso, 2019. "The increase of the gender wage gap in Italy during the 2008-2012 economic crisis," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 17(2), pages 171-193, June.
    2. Stefano Gagliarducci & M. Daniele Paserman, 2012. "Gender Interactions within Hierarchies: Evidence from the Political Arena," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 79(3), pages 1021-1052.
    3. 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.
    4. Iga Magda & Ewa Cukrowska-Torzewska, 2019. "Gender wage gap in the workplace: Does the age of the firm matter?," IBS Working Papers 01/2019, Instytut Badan Strukturalnych.
    5. repec:spr:jlabrs:v:52:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1186_s12651-017-0235-3 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. repec:eee:labeco:v:53:y:2018:i:c:p:75-96 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Stefano Filomeni & Gregory F. Udell & Alberto Zazzaro, 2016. "Hardening Soft Information: How Far Has Technology Taken Us?," CSEF Working Papers 455, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy.
    8. Pastore, Francesco & Sattar, Sarosh & Sinha, Nistha & Tiongson, Erwin R., 2016. "When Do Gender Wage Differences Emerge? A Study of Azerbaijan's Labor Market," IZA Discussion Papers 9660, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    9. Pieroni, Luca & Salmasi, Luca, 2012. "Smoking habit changes and body weight: causal estimates from the British Household Panel Survey," MPRA Paper 43465, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Barth, Erling & Pekkala Kerr, Sari & Olivetti, Claudia, 2017. "The Dynamics of Gender Earnings Differentials: Evidence from Establishment Data," IZA Discussion Papers 10974, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. Atsue Mizushima & Koichi Futagami, 2015. "Non-cooperative versus cooperative family," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 114(1), pages 43-62, January.
    12. Giulia Mancini, 2018. "Women's Labor Force Participation in Italy, 1861-2011," Rivista di storia economica, Società editrice il Mulino, issue 1, pages 3-68.
    13. Cerulli-Harms, Annette, 2017. "Generation Internship: The Impact of Internships on Early Labour Market Performance," IZA Discussion Papers 11163, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    14. Prifti, Ervin & Vuri, Daniela, 2013. "Employment protection and fertility: Evidence from the 1990 Italian reform," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(C), pages 77-88.
    15. Argaw, Bethlehem A. & Maier, Michael F. & Skriabikova, Olga J., 2017. "Risk attitudes, job mobility and subsequent wage growth during the early career," ZEW Discussion Papers 17-023, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    16. Fortin, Nicole M. & Bell, Brian & Böhm, Michael, 2017. "Top earnings inequality and the gender pay gap: Canada, Sweden, and the United Kingdom," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 107-123.
    17. Wiljan van den Berge & Arne Brouwers, 2017. "A lost generation? The early career effects of graduating during a recession," CPB Discussion Paper 356, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    18. Ebrahim Amina & Lilenstein Kezia, 2019. "Gender and the South African labour market: Policy relevant research possibilities using South African tax data," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2019-31, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    19. Casarico, A. & Lattanzio, S., 2019. "What Firms Do: Gender Inequality in Linked Employer-Employee Data," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1966, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    20. Pieroni, Luca & Salmasi, Luca, 2016. "The effect of smoking habit changes on body weight: Evidence from the UK," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 20(C), pages 1-13.
    21. Maier, Michael & Argaw, Bethlehem A. & Maier, Michael F. & Skriabikova, Olga J., 2016. "Risk attitudes, job mobility and subsequent wage growth during the early career," Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change 145677, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    panel data; job mobility; gender gap; wage growth; job satisfaction;

    JEL classification:

    • C23 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Models with Panel Data; Spatio-temporal Models
    • J62 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Job, Occupational and Intergenerational Mobility; Promotion
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • J28 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Safety; Job Satisfaction; Related Public Policy

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