Analyzing the gender pay gap

Empirical research on gender pay gaps has traditionally focused on the role of gender-specific factors, particularly gender differences in qualifications and differences in the treatment of otherwise equally qualified male and female workers (i.e., labor market discrimination). This paper explores the determinants of the gender pay gap and argues for the importance of an additional factor, wage structure, the array of prices set for labor market skills and the rewards received for employment in favored sectors. Drawing on our previous work we illustrate the impact of wage structure by presenting empirical results analyzing its effect on international differences in the gender gap and trends over time in the gender differential in the U.S.     

Gender Pay Gap in Poland

In this paper we examine the gender pay gap in Poland over 1987–1996, i.e., shortly before and during the transition to market economy. The principle source of data used throughout the paper is the Household Budget Survey conducted by the Polish Central Statistical Office. The study documents three major results. First, the transition to market economy in Poland favored women substantially in terms of relative earnings differentials. The gender pay gap decreased by 10.2 log% points and the position of mean female in male wage distribution went up by 9.9 percentiles over 1987–1996. By 1995, the values of these measures reached the level observed in industrial economies such as the U.K., Austria, Italy or Australia. Second, rising relative skills of women and rising returns to skills explain about half of the fall in the gender pay gap over 1987–1996. Third, the pay gap did not follow a smooth adjustment process. 1989, the year of the first democratic parliamentary elections, which resulted in forming the first non-communist government, saw the most spectacular change, although actual market reforms began one year after. The changes in the early phase of the transition were mostly driven by sudden shifts in relative wages and employment across industries. Afterwards, the pay gap measures stabilized, partly because rising overall wage inequalities offset the advantages of females due to observed skills. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

A fair go? The gender pay gap among corporate executives in Australian firms

In virtually all economies, executive positions are highly male dominated. This study examines the pay gap between male executives and female executives in large Australian firms from 2011 to 2014 to evaluate whether female executives are paid equitably compared with male executives. The mean pay comparison shows that female executives earn 80.7% of the total pay earned by male executives. A large part of the gender pay gap is explained by differences in positions held; female executives are particularly underrepresented in highly paid executive positions. After controlling for executive position and other relevant individual and firm characteristics, there remains a 15.1% gender gap in total pay. Our findings suggest that to achieve the goal of gender equity, both the proportion of women at executive level and the executive-level gender pay gap need to be monitored.     

Gendered cognitions: a socio-cognitive model of how gender affects entrepreneurial preferences

ABSTRACT

This research explores the social-cognitive factors which lead both women and men to pursue ventures consistent with their gendered social identity, therefore, reinforcing the gender gap in entrepreneurship. We measured the self-assessments of individuals presented with experimentally manipulated entrepreneurial opportunities that were either consistent or inconsistent with their self-reported gender. A theoretical model derived from Social Role Theory is presented and tested. It posits that a gender match (mismatch) with the entrepreneurial opportunity results in higher (lower) reported self-efficacy, anticipated social resources, and venture desirability and lower (higher) venture risk perceptions. The experimental data are tested in a sequential mediation SEM model. We find evidence that self-efficacy and anticipated social resources mediate the effect of gender congruency on perceived risk and venture desirability. The results provide insight into the insidious barriers that play a role in reproducing a gender gap in entrepreneurial outcomes by ‘nudging’ women into lower-return ventures in less lucrative industries.     

收入差距扩大化解析

收入差距是由于我国的体制改革、市场经济运行、二元经济结构、产业结构、就业等等原因造成的。选择合理的产业结构、合适的经济发展战略,必然对解决就业和收入差距问题产生积极的影响。     

GENDER PAY GAPS IN THE FORMER SOVIET UNION: A REVIEW OF THE EVIDENCE

The goal of this paper is to examine the patterns and movements of the gender pay gaps in the countries of the former Soviet Union (FSU) and to place them in the context of advanced economies. We survey over 30 publications and conduct a meta‐analysis of this literature. Gender pay gaps in the region are considerable and above the levels observed in advanced economies. Similar to advanced economies, industrial and occupational segregation widen the gaps in the FSU countries, whereas gender differences in educational attainment tend to shrink them. However, a much higher proportion of the gaps remains unexplained, pointing toward the role of unobserved gender differences related to actual and perceived productivity. Over the last 25 years, the gaps contracted in most FSU countries, primarily due to the reduction in the unexplained portion. Behind the contraction at the mean are different movements in the gap across the pay distribution. Although the glass‐ceiling effect has diminished in some FSU countries, it has persisted in others. We investigate the reasons underlying these findings and argue that the developments in the FSU region shed new light on our understanding of the gender pay gaps.     

Economic Growth and Structural Changes in Employment and Investments in China, 1985–94

This paper uses a shift-share method to quantify the components of economic growth and structural changes in employment and investments at both the national and regional levels. The results indicate that rapid economic growth has been characterized by significant shifts in employment and investments between industries in China. Such structural changes have a distinct regional pattern which has important policy implications regarding spatial disparities in economic growth and income. The results shed some important light on the understanding of Deng's development thought that is formalized in this paper as a multi-tier and multi-stage development strategy for a large developing economy. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Foreign ownership,human capital,and the structure of wages in Japan

We examine the differences in the structure of wages between domestic and foreign-owned establishments in Japan. We use high-quality datasets from the Japanese government and construct a large employer–employee matched database consisting of 1 million workers in 1998. Our results confirm that foreign-owned establishments in Japan pay higher wages. We estimate that one percentage increase in foreign-ownership share of equity raises wages by 0.3%. We surmise that this foreign-ownership wage premium can be explained, at least in part, by compensating wage differentials. Workers in foreign-owned establishments are not protected by lifetime employment. They receive higher compensation for being exposed to higher risk and forfeiting their employment security. We also find that in foreign-owned establishments, wages are determined more by general skills, and less by firm-specific skills. These effects become more pronounced among establishments with a higher share of foreign ownership. The gender wage gap is considerably smaller among foreign establishments. Given the lack of long-term prospects for women in the Japanese labor market, foreign-owned establishments may be one source of ‘brain drain’ for highly skilled women there.     

The ups and downs of European gender equality policy

In 2003, equal opportunities policy in the European Union suffered both ups and downs. New opportunities came in the guise of the hotly contested new directive on gender equality outside the field of employment, in the invitation to present the first of an annual report on equality between women and men to the Spring Council, in the consolidation of gender mainstreaming within the second round of the National Action Plans on social inclusion and in the new commitments to ‘substantial reductions by 2010’ in gender gaps in employment, unemployment and pay that were included in the new employment guidelines in 2003. These new guidelines presented, however, a major challenge to gender equality as the new phase of the European Employment Strategy dispensed with the four pillars, and therefore the equal opportunities pillar. Instead gender equality became just one of 10 new guidelines. In December the launch of the Employment Taskforce report appeared to push employment policy back more to a ‘full employment with flexibility’ approach and away from concerns with job quality. The focus was therefore more on the integration of women into employment rather than on closing the equality gap.     

Drivers of change in the European youth employment: a comparative structural decomposition analysis

This paper uses a structural decomposition approach to examine the proximate causes of change in the EU15 youth workforce from 1995 to 2011. Besides the traditional sources considered by the literature, I include age-specific factors: a labor utilization index that accounts for the hours that employed youth work by showing the extent of part-time contracts; an age mix factor that indicates the share that youth comprise of total employment and, finally, changes in the inverse of the overall sectoral labor productivity, which describes variations in total labor demand. By applying this approach, I identify the core drivers behind the recent changes in the evolution of youth employment in each of the 15 countries; this is crucial for tailoring policy strategies. Results suggest that to foster youth employment, most Mediterranean countries should implement youth-specific measures while other EU15 countries could do so by enhancing overall employment.     

北京市就业结构演变及特征

对北京市就业结构的演变历程进行了分析,运用曲线回归方法探讨了就业结构变动对就业水平的影响,并通过计算就业结构变化K值对就业结构变动的速度进行了动态分析。分析结果表明,北京市就业结构日益高级化,在结构转化的过程中,就业质量得到明显改善。     

When East meets West: interaction effects of organisational ownership structure,gender and (un)met expectations on workers' attitudes in China

This study adopts a framework of structural contingency and gender theories in a case-study-based investigation of changes in workers' attitudes towards their jobs and employers when working for enterprises with alliances with varying degrees of closeness to Western partners (equity joint venture- and contract joint venture [CJV]-type alliances). Workers moving from non-foreign-invested enterprise (FIE) to FIE employment perceived their enterprise FIEs to have more HR practices, and their attitudes towards their jobs and companies became moderately more positive. There were, however, limited differences by alliance type. This was explained by the intervening role of gender in the relationship between structure and attitudes, producing the unexpected result that CJV women experienced the least positive change in their attitudes, a finding the authors explained utilising (un)met expectation theory.     

Accounting for wage and employment changes in the US from 1968–2000: A dynamic model of labor market equilibrium

In this article, we present a unified treatment of and explanation for the evolution of wages and employment in the US over the last 30 years. Specifically, we account for the pattern of changes in wage inequality, for the increased relative wage and employment of women, for the emergence of the college wage premium and for the shift in employment from the goods to the service-producing sector. The underlying theory we adopt is neoclassical, a two-sector competitive labor market economy in which the supply of and demand for labor of heterogeneous skill determines spot market skill rental prices. The empirical approach is structural. The model embeds many of the features that have been posited in the literature to have contributed to the changing US wage and employment structure including skill-biased technical change, capital-skill complementarity, changes in relative product-market prices, changes in the productivity of labor in home production and demographics such as changing cohort size and fertility.     

Work-to-family enrichment and gender inequalities in eight European countries

Abstract

All social roles have positive and rewarding as well as negative/problematic aspects. Research on the work–family interface has predominantly focused on conflicting roles. In contrast, this paper extends research on work–family enrichment (WFE), a positive aspect of work and gender differences in WFE in a cross-national context. Drawing upon social role theory and the culture sensitive theory on work–family enrichment, we examined gender differences in experiences of developmental WFE in a sample of service sector employees in eight European countries. In line with traditional gender roles, women reported more WFE than men. The relationship was moderated by both an objective and subjective measure of gender egalitarianism but in the opposite direction as hypothesized. The gender gap in WFE was larger in more gender-egalitarian countries, where women may be better able to transfer resources from the work domain to benefit their family role than in low egalitarian societies. National differences in labour market factors, family models and the public discourse on work–life balance mainly explain the unanticipated findings.     

中国出口结构变革和经济增长的协整分析

本文在以前研究的基础上探讨了出口和经济增长的关系,并考虑出口结构变化对经济增长的影响。不仅证实了出口和经济增长相互促进关系,还证实了出口结构的变化也是促进经济增长的有利因素之一。     

Transformations in- and outside the internal labour market: institutional change and continuity in Japanese employment practices

The weak performance of the Japanese economy since the 1990s has renewed the debate on the efficiency of its employment practices. Although actual changes have long trailed expectations, two major developments have taken place in recent years: a rise in non-regular employment and the introduction of performance-related pay (seikashugi). Both affect the internal labour market that has been crucial to human resource management in Japan. The first development diminishes its relevance and the second directly impacts its functioning. This paper discusses these changes and the factors that determine their character. Moreover, it argues that the changes are not just aligned with but also made possible by an important continuity in the support for the core practice of lifetime employment. What results is a story of institutional change and continuity which argues that the specific character of Japanese employment practices remains in spite of an apparent convergence.     

Gender pay equity: Exploring the impact of formal,consistent and transparent human resource management practices and information

This article explores the extent to which formalised HR practices can reduce gender bias in pay setting or whether, following Acker (2006), gender bias may still be embedded within formalised HR practices. Detailed investigation of a critical case study of a Chilean finance organisation with a strong commitment to formalised, consistent and transparent pay practices based on individuated information, revealed only a small negative gender effect on pay and no identifiable gender effects in starting salaries, merit pay or promotion. These findings provide some support for the proposition that HR practices focused on job‐related performance (Reskin, 2000) and limiting managerial discretion may facilitate gender pay equity. However, the case also reveals the limits of these policies. Women scored equally well on performance but formalised scores on future potential were higher for men and mattered more. A significant gender effect emerged in promotion to more senior posts. These mixed outcomes suggest that Acker's (2006) proposition still holds.     

ATTITUDES TOWARDS ECONOMIC RISK AND THE GENDER PAY GAP

This paper examines the links between gender differences in attitudes towards economic risk and the gender pay gap. Consistent with the literature on the socio-economic determinants of attitudes towards economic risk, it shows that females are much more risk averse than males. It then extends this research to show that workers with more favorable attitudes towards risk are associated with higher earnings, and that gender differences in attitudes towards economic risk can account for a small, though important, part of the standardized gender pay gap.     

转型时期制度变迁对我国经济增长影响的实证分析

我国现在进行的改革开放必然会引起制度的变迁,而从经济学理论上讲,制度的变迁又会对经济的发展产生巨大影响。文中制度这一因素引入经济增长模型,并量化测度了制度变迁,并进行实证分析。结果表明,改革开放30多年来我国的制度变迁对经济的增长具有巨大的促进作用。而目前,我国的体制改革尚未完成,仍有较大的制度变迁空间,所以制度创新与变革仍然是我国未来较长一段时期内经济增长的重要动力源泉。     

Comparisons of agricultural productivity growth in China and India

We measure and compare agricultural total factor productivity (TFP) growth and its components (efficiency and technical change) in China and India and test the TFP series for the existence of structural breaks relating the evolution of TFP to policy milestones. Our results show that agricultural TFP growth accelerates in China after 1979 and in India after 1974, although China’s agricultural sector clearly outperforms India’s. The main explanation of these differentials is that agricultural growth in China benefited from more fundamental institutional and policy reforms in agriculture than India. There is some evidence that the transformation of industry in China was also important for agricultural TFP growth. Manufacture growth absorbed labor and reduced employment in agriculture, creating incentives for capital investment and technical change that kept output per worker in agriculture growing at high rates. Fewer changes in agricultural policies and in the dynamics of manufacturing in India resulted in slower growth in agricultural productivity, despite policy changes that accelerated economic growth in recent years.