Male-female Wage Differentials Research Articles

Explaining the reduction in the gender wage gap during the 1990–94 economic recession in Spain

Many studies reveal that male-female wage differentials increase with the level of unemployment, suggesting that women are hurt by a recession more than men. However, the 1990–94 economic recession in Spain contributed to reduce the gender wage gap by almost 5 percentage points (from 83.94 percent in 1990 to 90.44 percent in 1994). This was mainly due to the relative increase in services industry employment, the activity where the gender wage gap is the lowest.

Gender Differences in Labor Turnover and the Development of Internal Labor Markets in the United States during the 1920s

Exploring the relationship between gender differences in labor turnover—which have been linked to male-female wage differentials—and the early twentieth-century development of internal labor markets, this case study suggests that observed gender differences in labor turnover in the twentieth century can be attributed, at least in part, to the specific employment policy decisions of firms. These policies, and the internal labor markets they helped create, directly addressed some of the causes of male turnover but did little to confront the sources (often non-market) of female turnover. The results of this analysis call into question the assumption that the higher rate of female turnover is exogenously determined.

Sex Differentials in Earnings in the South Korean Labor Market

We examine gender differences in earnings among South Korean workers in 1988 – the year the South Korean National Assembly enacted the Equal Employment Opportunity Act. Using the "88 Occupational Wage Bargaining Survey on the Actual Condition," we calculate women's mean earnings as a percentage of men's mean earnings by major industrial category and educational attainment. We find a larger wage gap among clerical and sales workers than production workers or professionals. Generally, the more education a woman has, the smaller the gap between her earnings and those of her male counterparts. Women with a middle-school education have a mean income 53.5 percent that of comparable men, while the female-to-male wage ratio among college graduates is 76.1 percent. We analyze wage differences separately for women and men. Following Ronald Oaxaca's (1973) work, we decompose male–female wage differentials. We also calculate a discrimination coefficient. Our work shows that, all else equal, men earn from 33.6 percent to 46.9 percent more than women with comparable skills. We attribute the difference to gender discrimination.

A hierarchical theory of occupational segregation and wage discrimination

Becker's model of discrimination is extended to the case where men exhibit distastes for working under female managers. The distribution of women in the resulting occupational hierarchy depends on the number of women in lower occupations, the wages of male workers in lower occupations, and male distastes for female management. Thus, there exists an occupational sorting function, related to wages, that determines the occupational distribution of women. We integrate this sorting function into a standard wage equation to derive a new decomposition of male-female wage differentials and apply it to a sample of insurance industry workers from the 1988 CPS.

A hierarchical theory of occupational segregation and wage discrimination

Becker's model of discrimination is extended to the case where men exhibit distastes for working under female managers. The distribution of women in the resulting occupational hierarchy depends on the number of women in lower occupations, the wages of male workers in lower occupations, and male distastes for female management. Thus, there exists an occupational sorting function, related to wages, that determines the occupational distribution of women. We integrate this sorting function into a standard wage equation to derive a new decomposition of male‐female wage differentials and apply it to a sample of insurance industry workers from the 1988 CPS.

Contractors, Comparable Worth and the New OFCCP: DéjàVu and More

Recent federal government initiatives suggest that comparable worth is being resurrected as a major policy initiative. The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs has introduced the Equal Opportunity Survey, which requires government contractors to provide compensation data broken out by gender and race/ ethnicity for each of the nine equal employment opportunity (EEO) occupational classifications. The compensation data from the survey are already being used to target contractors for audits and represent a new and extended drive to impose comparable worth principles through federal regulations. This article focuses on the EEO Survey and its shortcomings as a source of data for analysis. Legitimate sources of male-female wage differentials are discussed, along with the difficulties that would be encountered in implementing a pay system that would meet traditional comparable worth standards. Methods contractors can use to carry out an internal audit to defend pay discrimination charges related to comparable worth are described.

The Determination of Wages and the Gender Wage Gap: A Survey

In this paper the extensive empirical literature on the gender wage gap is reviewed with particular attention given to the identification of the key parameters in the specified human capital wage regression models. This aspect has been of great importance in the literature chiefly for two reasons. On the one hand, the main explanatory variables in the wage model, i.e., measures of work experience and time out of work, are endogenous and, hence, applying traditional estimators may lead to inconsistent parameter estimates. On the other hand, empirical evidence on the gender wage gap hinges on the estimates of the main parameters of interest, and its economic meaningfulness may be limited by restrictive assumptions imputed on the wage model. The survey shows that econometric methods are still more advanced than their applications, and that in applications consistency often is only achieved at the expense of restrictive assumptions that are dubious from an economic perspective. In short, it seems that current measures of male-female wage differentials are likely to be biased because of the failure to appropriately account for endogeneity and selectivity in the wage regression models.

Female Agricultural Workers' Wages, Male-Female Wage Differentials, and Agricultural Growth in a Developing Country, India

The data on Indian agricultural wages for the period 1966-88 reveal a clearly rising trend in female agricultural wage workers' earnings in terms of both nominal and real wages. Because of the Green Revolution, agriculture in India also witnessed during this period phenomenal yield increases of major crops in several agricultural regions. Growth in agricultural output has been attributed largely to the adoption of biochemical technological innovations and expansion of irrigational facilities. The descriptive data on agricultural wages also reveal a few noticeable rural labor market phenomena particularly pertaining to female agricultural wage workers. First, the estimated all-India agricultural average daily real wage rates for male and female wage workers show that female workers' wages continue to be lower than male workers' wages (fig. 1), a trend that holds across the 16 states studied. Second, substantial cross-state differences continue to exist in the daily wage rates of female agricultural wage workers, ranging from as low as Rs 1.72 in Tamilnadu to Rs 4.77 in Punjab. Third, although the overall male-female earnings gap has declined over time (fig. 2), quite large differentials continue to exist across the major agricultural regions of the country. Fourth, and rather surprisingly, some of the regions with relatively high levels of yield and agricultural development are also characterized by a combination of relatively lower female agricultural workers' wages and higher male-female wage differentials than are the poorer states with comparatively low agricultural yields. For example, female agricultural wage workers earn, on the average, only 64% of male workers' wages in Tamilnadu, 67% in Maharashtra, 75% in Haryana, and 78% in Punjab; whereas in relatively

Japanese-Style Employment Practices and Male-Female Wage Differentials

In the previous chapter, we considered how women coped with economic change and how that influenced male-female wage differentials. Women's employment patterns have changed dramatically depending o...

Paying the Professor: Sources of Salary Variation in Academic Labor Markets

Using a set of 58 academic fields as distinct labor markets we examined the extent of wage variation within markets. The degree to which wages vary is an indicator of market efficiency and of whether a market wage exists. Holding constant differences in human capital, we found that the degree of wage variation in an academic labor market is negatively related to mobility within that market and positively related to the oversupply of labor We also found that as wage variation increases, male-female wage differentials also increase.

Panel estimates of the gender earnings gap: Individual-specific intercept and individual-specific slope models

This paper develops individual-specific slope (as opposed to individual-specific intercept) models to account for unobserved heterogeneity in estimating male-female wage differentials. Estimates from these models are compared to traditional OLS, as well as to fixed- and random-effects individual- specific intercept approaches. We find unambiguously that unobserved heterogeneity accounts for about 50% of the male-female wage gap, with individual-specific slope models explaining a slightly smaller proportion of the wage gap. Based on inferences from life-cycle earnings models, we conclude that most individual-specific differences manifest themselves early in one's work career, probably even in the type of schooling received.

The Gender Gap in Earnings

The gender income gap is a much debated subject both at an analytical and economic level. This article considers both, but emphasizes the different ways the data can be analyzed. The authors show that a hierarchical linear model is the best way to evaluate male-female wage differentials. Both interindustry and intraindustry wage disparities between men and women are measured by using a technique that assumes that observations within the same industry have correlated error terms. By simultaneously testing human capital factors and environmental factors, the analysis model serves as a link between theory and empirical analysis. The results show that the wage differences are larger in some industries than in others, so that it can be assumed that a gender income gap is not only a function of individual differences in qualification, but also differences between industries. The between-industry differences in gender income gaps contradict the hypothesis that gender income differential is largely due to female work preferences and the resulting segregation.

Male-Female Wage Differentials in Taiwan: A Human Capital Approach

During the past 3 decades, male-female wage differentials have attracted much attention in all countries for which there are data. The usual approach is to decompose gender wage differentials into two parts: one attributable to an individual's characteristics holding reward structure constant, and the other attributable to a different reward structure holding characteristics constant.' The latter part is usually defined to represent discrimination. Using this approach with data from the 1967 Survey of Economic Opportunity, Ronald Oaxaca found 80% of the observed gender wage differential to be ascribed to labor market discrimination. Mary Corcoran and Greg J. Duncan, using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, which provides detailed work histories, found a 56% discrimination figure, implying that productivityrelated characteristics accounted for 44% of the observed male-female wage differentials. Because of inherent biases, particularly with regard to measuring human capital, Solomon W. Polachek proposed an alternative way to determine one's characteristics.2 He measured expected human capital, then embedded this measure in a wage regression on pooled male and female data. Over 90% of the male-female earnings gap was explained by gender differences in human capital. Claudia Goldin and Polachek applied Polachek's technique to the 1980 U.S. Census data and accounted for about 80% of the male-female earnings gap.

Explaining the Male-Female Wage Gap: Job Segregation and Solidarity Wage Bargaining in Sweden

The fundamental issue addressed in this paper is why women receive lower wages than men. The relevance of four explanations is investigated: women's responsibility for family and household work, women's lower human capital, compensating wage differentials between men and women, and job segregation The job segregation explanation is given primary attention in these analyses, given that solidarity wage bargaining in Sweden is generally assumed to have promoted equal pay for equal type of job, and hence that no male-female wage differentials ought to exist once the relevant job characteristics are controlled for. Empirical analyses, based on Swedish labour-market data in 1981, show that job segregation indeed explains a sizeable proportion of the gender wage gap, much more than the other three types of factors. A substantial unexplained residual remains, however, net of a large number of individual, family, job and industry characteristics. It is argued that this unexplained wage differential is too large to be explained by misspecification or coarseness of measures The most reasonable interpretation instead is that male and female workers with the same productive attributes, family obligations, and job characteristics receive different hourly wages. The result thus indicates the presence of sex discrimination in the Swedish labour-market, i.e., that solidarity wage bargaining, even at its peak in 1981, did not result in equal treatment of men and women

Pension Benefits and Male-Female Wage Differentials

Female members of defined benefit pension plans will receive greater pension benefits than males with identical work and earnings histories, since females have greater longevity. Yet females have higher turnover rates and lower earnings, both of which serve to reduce pension benefits relative to those received by males. We illustrate the net effect, on pension benefits in defined benefit plans, of gender differences in longevity, turnover, and wages. We conclude that females tend to receive lower pension benefits and therefore that pension benefits are more likely to exacerbate than to reduce the male-female wage gap.

MALE‐FEMALE WAGE DIFFERENTIALS IN AUSTRALIA: A REASSESSMENT*

Australian Economic PapersVolume 30, Issue 56 p. 50-69 MALE-FEMALE WAGE DIFFERENTIALS IN AUSTRALIA: A REASSESSMENT* PAUL MILLER, PAUL MILLER University of QueenslandSearch for more papers by this authorSARAH RUMMERY, SARAH RUMMERY Australian National UniversitySearch for more papers by this author PAUL MILLER, PAUL MILLER University of QueenslandSearch for more papers by this authorSARAH RUMMERY, SARAH RUMMERY Australian National UniversitySearch for more papers by this author First published: June 1991 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8454.1991.tb00530.xCitations: 18 † *We wish to thank Ken Clements and Michael Kidd for helpful comments. AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume30, Issue56June 1991Pages 50-69 RelatedInformation

Male-Female Wage Differentials in Job Ladders

Much of the male-female wage differential exists because men and women are assigned to different jobs. Within narrow job categories, there is no male-female differential. Only a tortured taste theory of discrimination can reconcile these facts. We argue that differential movement along job ladders entails comparative advantage, so the ability standard for promotion is higher for women. This implies that more able women will be passed over in favor of less able men. Women, assumed to have the same ability distribution as men, earn less. The differential reflects females' lower promotion probability, not within-job discrimination.

Women'S History and the History of Women Teachers

The social history of teaching has attracted much interest in recent years.1 In particular, scholars have sought to analyze transformation of teaching into over course of 19th century. As is well known, already by mid-century, teaching in United States was coming to be seen as work for women; by end of century teaching force nationwide was overwhelmingly female. Historians thus far have begun to explore this development in mid-19th century by looking at ways in which the cult of true womanhood and idea that women were nurturant moral guardians underlay movement to employ women teachers (Hoffman, 1979; Kaufman, 1984; Sklar, 1973). More recently, quantitative studies of midand late-19th century have been undertaken to investigate economic conditions underlying hiring of women teachers. These studies have tested generalizations about male-female wage differentials and length of women's teaching careers by examining census and school records (Bernard & Vinovskis, 1977; Carter, 1986; Danylewycz & Prentice, 1984, 1986; Prentice, 1975; Rury, 1984; Richardson & Hatcher, 1983; Strober & Gordon, 1986). Other historians have used teachers' accounts of their own lives and teaching to consider ways in which teaching may have been a liberating experience for women teachers (Clifford, 1981, 1982). These studies have begun to clarify our understanding of teachers' careers and have raised important areas for future investigation. In this paper, I want to consider history of women teachers from a different vantage point one that makes use of feminist theory and feminist historiography. I focus on woman schoolteacher as an ideological construct, a term whose meaning was struggled over by different groups with varying interests. In order to examine this process, I turn to recent work in both feminist theory and women's history. I first examine work of recent feminist theorists in philosophy and politics who are creating new epistemologica! and theoretical approaches; I then examine ways in which these theoretical approaches have been applied to women's history, in particular

Employers' Discriminatory Behavior and the Estimation of Wage Discrimination

This paper considers the linkage of empirical estimates of wage discrimination between two groups, introduced by Oaxaca (1973), to a theoretical model of employers' discriminatory behavior. It is shown that, conditional on different assumptions about employers' discriminatory tastes, Oaxaca's estimators of wage discrimination can be derived. That the approach is more generally useful is demonstrated by deriving an alternative estimator of wage discrimination, based on the assumption that within each type of labor (e.g., unskilled, skilled) the utility function capturing employers' discriminatory tastes is homogeneous of degree zero with respect to labor inputs from each of the two groups. The estimators are compared empirically in an application to male-female wage differentials.

Spline Function Estimates of the Impact of Equal Pay Legislation: The Ontario Experience

Spline Function Estimates of the Impact of Equal Pay Legislation: The Ontario Experience. Un article de la revue Relations industrielles / Industrial Relations (Volume 40, numéro 4, 1985, p. 703-936) diffusée par la plateforme Érudit.