The measurement of gender earnings differentials for foreign-trained and local-trained IT professionals: The case of Singapore

Abstract

Most studies on wage differentials have been conducted in the west. Few are made of the developing countries, where data on personnel profiles are generally found to be wanting. This study employs Borjas's technique to assess the effects of differences in country source of education on gender wage differentials in a first attempt to study on the wage differentials of computer personnel in a non-western country. Regression results indicate that the important determinants of earnings in the IT professions are education, total IT work experience, current IT work experience, age, gender, an engineering qualification, non-IT degrees, and overseas training. They also reveal that, male foreign-trained professionals are paid higher salaries than male local-trained professionals and that foreign-trained female professionals in the user section in general also earn more than the males.