Gender Wage Differentials in the French Nonprofit and For-profit Sectors: Evidence from Quantile Regression

Abstract

Using the French Labor Force Survey from 1994-2001, this paper investigates the gender wage gap in the nonprofit and for-profit sectors throughout the wage distribution. Following LEETE [2000], if nonprofit employers are more likely than for-profit employers to rely on intrinsically motivated employees, one should expect nonprofit organizations to exhibit a lower gender wage gap than for-profit organizations as a means of maintaining and enhancing employees' intrinsic motivation. We use the quantile regression decomposition technique proposed by MACHADO and MATA [2005]. Because individuals may self-select into sectors, we have extended this technique to account for selection effects. Our main results show that the unexplained gender wage gap is larger in the for-profit sector than in the nonprofit sector throughout the wage distribution. These results seem to be primarily attributed to lower levels of occupational segregation in the French nonprofit sector.