Abstract
We use data from six cohorts of university graduates in Germany to assess the extent of gender gaps in college and labor market performance twelve to eighteen months after graduation. Men and women enter college in roughly equal numbers, but more women than men complete their degrees. Women enter college with slightly better high school grades, but women leave university with slightly lower marks. Immediately following university completion, male and female full-timers work very similar number of hours per week, but men earn more than women across the pay distribution, with an unadjusted gender gap in full-time monthly earnings of about 20 log points on average. Including a large set of controls reduces the gap to 5-10 log points. The single most important proximate factor that explains the gap is field of study at university.
Highlights
Since the influential survey by Altonji and Blank (1999), the economic literature has offered a variety of new explanations about gender gaps. Bertrand (2010) provides an insightful review of recent contributions, drawing on advances in the psychology and experimental literatures
In a more recent assessment with data from the 1996 Labor Force Survey, Machin and Puhani (2003) find that the gender wage difference among university graduates in Germany is about 28 log points, and about 40% of the explained gap can be accounted for by field of study
Using data pooled across five cohorts and with a regression that controls for survey wave dummies, we find a small gender gap at 0.022 points (s.e.=0.006) that favors men (see column (a) of Table 3)
Summary
Since the influential survey by Altonji and Blank (1999), the economic literature has offered a variety of new explanations about gender gaps. Bertrand (2010) provides an insightful review of recent contributions, drawing on advances in the psychology and experimental literatures. In a more recent assessment with data from the 1996 Labor Force Survey, Machin and Puhani (2003) find that the (raw) gender wage difference among university graduates in Germany is about 28 log points, and about 40% of the explained gap can be accounted for by field of study. Average full-time monthly log earnings (excluding additional bonuses or variable pay) are 7.587 (corresponding to just below 2000 Euros, measured in 2001 prices) for all workers across all graduation cohorts, with men earning 28.3 log points (or nearly one-third) more than women.15 Almost one-third of men have completed an apprenticeship before starting their degree, as opposed to only one-quarter of women Compared to their male counterparts, female graduates have parents (both mothers and fathers) with substantially higher education, greater labor market involvement, and in higher-level occupations.
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