Something in the way she moves: a fresh look at an old gap

In this paper, we propose a new decomposition as a useful complementto traditional methods of explaining the gender pay gap andthe pay gap between full-time and part-time women. We decomposeaverage earnings into the contribution of the average startingwage for workers entering paid work from non-employment, averagewage growth for those in continuous employment, and the fractionof workers entering employment. We use this to inform discussionof the pay gap, first, between men and women and, second, betweenfull-time and part-time women. Comparing men and women usingdata drawn from the British Household Panel Survey, we findno significant differences in wage growth whilst in continuousemployment: the source of the gender pay gap comes from theentrant pay gap and the share of entrants. The study of longer-runchanges leads us to expect a modest further narrowing of thisgap. Comparisons of full- and part-time women indicate no differencein entry pay shares and little difference in wage growth. Thebulk of the full- to part-time gap is explained in terms ofthe fact that women working part-time are much more likely tobe entrants to the labour market.     

The gender wage gap in Myanmar: Adding insult to injury?

Using two surveys from 2017, we analyze the gender wage gap for urban workers in Myanmar. We start from a standard wage equation and condition on education, experience, health and a small set of household demographic attributes. Subsequently we control for differences in occupational choice and sector of employment. We estimate the models with sample selection correction and this leads to estimated average wage offers that are lower than the observed average wages for women. Selection into wage work results in a workforce where female wage-workers have higher levels of education compared to their male counterparts. However, average wages for female workers continue to be 29% lower than male average wages. Differences in observable attributes do not account for this gap. Instead, it is associated with a lower base wage and lower remuneration of women’s experience. Going beyond the traditional decomposition methods, we utilize our matched employer–employee survey to generate exact comparisons of female and male production workers with equal levels of education and experience, employed in the same enterprises. Even in this setting, we find a gender wage gap of 13%. Our analysis thus indicates discrimination against women in Myanmar’s labor markets.     

Equal Employment Opportunity Law and the gender wage gap in Japan: A cohort analysis

In this article, I perform a cohort-based analysis of the female-to-male wage gap using aggregate data in Japan from 1975 to 2005. While the inter-cohort closing in the gender wage gap is apparent, the convergence is smaller when the gap is calculated for each level of education. This pattern suggests that a certain portion of the gender wage convergence is due to changes in the educational composition of the workforce. I find that educational composition changes played a larger role in closing the pay gap for younger cohorts than it did for older cohorts. Highly educated women who entered the labor market after the enactment of the Equal Employment Opportunity Law gained in that they had more regular full-time employment but did not experience wage gains relative to their male counterparts.     

Retirement policy,employment status,and gender pay gap in urban China

China’s current retirement policy has been in effect since 1978. The legal retirement age is 50 years for female workers, 55 years for female cadres, and 60 years for male cadres and workers; women can retire 5 or 10 years earlier than men. This difference in legal retirement age may affect wage growth in those approaching retirement. Based on China’s Urban Household Survey data set, this study investigated the influence of retirement age differences on the gender pay gap. From age 30 to 49 years, the wage difference between female workers and cadres increased by approximately 15 % more than that of men. After consideration of possible endogeneity problems and demonstration of the robustness of the regression results, the study determined that such differences were likely caused by gender and identity differences at retirement age. Among workers and cadres, the retirement age policy exacerbated gender differences in wages through working hours, wage rate, career promotion, and job change activity in those approaching retirement.     

Male–female wage differentials in Japan

This paper empirically analyzes the gender wage gap in Japan using a new data set KHPS2004 which contains a wealth of information on the work history of individuals. KHPS2004 enables us to estimate wage functions without overstating individual’s human capital accumulation by work experience especially for females. Neuman-Oaxaca decomposition method is employed to analyze why the gender wage gap appears to exist in Japan. Main reasons as follows. First, full-time work experience and seniority which affect significantly wages is shorter for females than for males. Second, there are significant differences in evaluation of full-time experience between males and females.     

Occupational assignment,hiring discrimination,and the gender pay gap

An identified, structural demand-wage equation is estimated using endogenous indicators for working part-time and occupational assignment. The wage equation is estimated by two-stage and ordinary least squares, and the pay gap is decomposed into explained and residual parts. Measures of gender-based wage discrimination are estimated after making adjustments to account for hiring discrimination and occupational preferences. The evidence indicates that gender differences in preferences for occupation explain much of the gap, yet there is still evidence of hiring discrimination. As a percentage of male wages, the discriminatory gap adjusted for hiring discrimination lies between 10.5 and 13.5 percent when estimated by ordinary least squares, and between 2.2 and 5.4 percent when estimated by two-stage least squares.     

The Part-Time Wage Gap: a Career Perspective

Summary  Because promotions are an important source of wage growth, we argue that the low incidence of promotions among part-time workers will contribute to the emergence of the part-time wage gap. We test this claim using Dutch employer–employee matched data. We find that the part-time wage gap is absent among young school leavers, but that it is well established among more mature workers. Moreover, we find that promotions account for a wage growth of about eight log points. Finally, workers in part-time jobs experience a lower rate of promotion relative to workers in full-time jobs. We are grateful to the Dutch Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment for granting access to the data. The paper greatly benefited from comments by Daniel Hamermesh, Jonathan Wadsworth, and seminar participants at ZEW in Mannheim, at WPEG conference at York University and Tilburg University. We are also indebted to two anonymous referees for helpful suggestions that substantially improved the quality of the paper. The usual disclaimer applies.     

Market wage or discrimination? The remuneration of male and female wool spinners in the seventeenth‐century Dutch Republic1

In the historical debate, the gender wage gap is usually attributed either to productivity differences or to gender discrimination. By analysing a newly constructed series of spinning wages in the seventeenth‐century Dutch Republic, the wages of male and female textile workers for the same work could be investigated. At first sight, the evidence on equal piece rates for spinning men and women seems to rule out wage discrimination. Nevertheless, more deeply rooted gender discrimination resulting from the segmented seventeenth‐century labour market restricted women's access to many professions. Exactly this segmentation determined differences in wage earning capacities between men and women.     

Export Activity,Firm Size and Wage Structure: Evidence from Taiwanese Manufacturing Firms*

This study adopts a semiparametric smooth coefficient model to evaluate the export–wage premiums, firm size–wage premiums, and the wage gap between skilled and unskilled labor. Particular focus is placed upon widespread evidence indicating that pay levels in ‘large’ and ‘export‐oriented’ firms are higher than in their ‘small’ and ‘domestic‐oriented’ counterparts. Applying the firm‐level data for Taiwanese manufacturing firms, we find a positive export–wage premium for skilled workers and a negative export–wage premium for unskilled workers. The hypothesis of a constant export premium across firm size is rejected. While most of the export–wage premiums for skilled labor can be attributed to the small and medium firms, the large exporting firms have a significant adverse effect on wages for unskilled labor. Moreover, our results suggest that the firm size–wage premiums for skilled workers are larger than those for unskilled workers. The wage gap between the two skill groups is also sensitive to size categories.     

Wage differentials between local and foreign workers in Macao: Discrimination?

This paper looks into the wage differential between local and foreign workers in Macao. We applied standard wage decomposition techniques to official wage statistics to identify wage gaps according to sector and occupation, among other dimensions. The results suggest that, in addition to wage discrimination against foreign workers as a whole, Macao’s employers tend to pay skilled foreign workers premium wages, whereas less-skilled foreign workers receive lower wages than their local counterparts.     

Employment and Earnings: A Case Study of Urban Detroit

This paper investigates the roles of manufacturing employment, neighborhood poverty, and family structure in determining wages among Detroit, MI workers, just prior to the current economic crisis. Employment in manufacturing has been crucial for blacks and whites: 39% of black and of white men in the Detroit metropolitan area worked in manufacturing in 2000. Regression analysis in this paper estimates employment in manufacturing raised wages 15.8% for all workers in the metropolitan area, 24.4% for blacks and 13.8% for whites. It finds a higher wage penalty (4.7%) for blacks in non-manufacturing industries than is found when manufacturing sector jobs are included (2.6%). Wage returns to education were greater in the non-manufacturing employment sector, especially for blacks. Residence in the poorest central city neighborhoods reduced wages significantly for white manufacturing and non-manufacturing workers. Its coefficient was insignificant for black workers. Gender and marital status effects on wages differed between blacks and whites in magnitude: White women suffered a larger penalty for their sex than black women (22.6 versus 9.6%) yet black men enjoyed a greater return to marriage than white men (27.5 versus 25.0%). Controlling for manufacturing reduced the gender wage gap and the returns to marriage for men. These findings suggest greater accessibility for women; and lower returns to marriage in non-manufacturing sectors. Among employed blacks access to manufacturing jobs has been their main source of decent wages. The adverse effects of the industry??s job loss in the 1980s and 1990s impacted all Detroit residents. Other high wage industries have employed relatively few blacks, have not paid them well; and have suffered job loss and slow growth over the period. Education could have raised wages for non-manufacturing workers, but not as much as access to manufacturing jobs. Today as in 2000, Detroit??s residents desperately need job creation or relocation to the central city; and job training and anti-discrimination policy enforcement throughout the metro-area. All of these would be necessary to offset job loss and reduce inequality and poverty in Detroit. The extent to which blacks will benefit from 2010?C11 improvements in manufacturing employment in Detroit depends upon whether private companies and the state provide equal access to the jobs and the training new technologies require.     

Gender Discrimination and Worker Selectivity: A Comparison of the Self-employed and Wage Earners

This study compares the size and nature of the gender earnings differentials for the self-employed and wage earners in Korea, taking into account the workers’ self-selection of each employment type. The two-stage estimates of the earnings equation, corrected for worker selectivity, are used to decompose the gender earnings differentials into productivity-related and discriminatory factors. Our results suggest that the size of the gender earnings gap is larger in the wage sector than in the self-employment sector, but not by large margin, and so is the discrimination effect when not controlled for worker selectivity. With worker selectivity controlled, the discrimination effect is greatly intensified in the wage sector, while it becomes not significant in the self-employment sector. These findings imply that the observed gender earnings gap in the wage sector is largely ascribed to discrimination against women, while the gender earnings gap in the self-employment sector is mostly due to productivity difference that, in part, is caused by worker selectivity.     

Wages and Teachers’ Hours of Work

This paper seeks to estimate the effect of teachers net marginal wages on their working hours, on the basis of a survey of Dutch teachers. The resulting uncompensated wage elasticity is significantly positive and has an average value of 0.2 for males and 0.4 for females. However, a general wage increase is a rather costly solution to teacher shortages. Alternatively, working full-time can be made attractive for part-time teachers by providing a premium for full-time teachers. This kind of premium provides part-time teachers with a stronger incentive to work full-time, as the negative income effect does not occur. Simulation results show that such a premium produces an effect that is almost seven times as large as a general wage increase.     

Part-time workers doing full-time work in Japan

This paper is concerned with the phenomenon of part-time workers performing similar types of jobs to full-time workers in the same workplace. We use data from Japan's Survey on Diversified Types of Employment to answer two questions. First, why are firms increasingly employing part-time workers in jobs traditionally offered to full-time workers? Second, what are the characteristics of the workers taking these jobs? As for the former, it is primarily service sector firms using this new work relationship. Interestingly, there is evidence that manufacturing firms are outsourcing in lieu of hiring domestic part-time workers. On a positive note, we find evidence that part-time workers are screened by firms for full-time jobs. As to the second question, the workers are primarily professionals working long hours. As an aside, based on our data we find no evidence that part-time workers are more likely to be involuntarily employed in full-time jobs than in non full-time jobs. J. Japanese Int. Economies 21 (4) (2007) 435–454.     

THE DANISH GENDER WAGE GAP IN THE 1980s: A PANEL DATA STUDY

In Denmark the equal pay act was put into force in 1976, butthe relative pay of female workers is still considerably belowthe level of male workers in most occupational and educationalgroups, and the decline of the aggregate gender wage gap seemsto have stagnated since the late 1970s. In this study differentexplanations of this evidence are investigated empirically basedon the estimation of a human capital model on a panel sampleof Danish wage earners observed during the period 1979–90.     

Role of Individual Social Capital in Wage Determination: Evidence from China

The present study examines the role of individual‐level social capital in workers’ wage determination in a Nash‐bargaining wage model using Chinese micro‐level data. The study finds a significant contribution of individual‐specific social capital to the wage level. In particular, larger individual social networks and workers’ positive attitudes toward social capital significantly increase the wage level. Moreover, the effect of social capital on the wage level is much larger for men than for women. The results indicate that construction of individual social capital could increase workers’ wages. However, efforts are needed to reduce the unequal contributions of social capital between men and women.     

A comparison of the wage structure between the public and private sectors in Japan

This study compares the wages in the public and private sectors in Japan. In addition to comparing overall wage levels, we examine the differences in the wage structures, specifically, the relative wages by gender, age, education, and region. The size of the public sector wage premium depends crucially on the size of the private companies chosen as the comparison group. Wage gaps by gender and educational attainment are smaller in the public sector than they are in private companies. The public sector's age–wage profile is steeper than that of the private sector. Public sector wages are more compressed. In other words, the wages are relatively higher at the lower end of the wage distribution and relatively lower at the higher end. The regional wage differentials are smaller in the public sector. Here, the wage levels of public sector workers are relatively higher in rural regions and relatively lower in large metropolitan regions. To ensure the efficient provision of public services, it is inappropriate to compare only mean wages.     

Wage growth and inequality in urban China: 1988–2013

We investigate the evolution of wage levels, wage inequality, and wage determinants among urban residents in China using China Household Income Project data from 1988, 1995, 2002, 2007, and 2013.Average wage grew impressively between each pair of years. Wage inequality had long been on the increase, but between 2007 and 2013 no clear changes occurred. In 1988, age and wages were positively related throughout working life, but more recently older workers' wages have been lower than those of middle-aged workers. The relationship between education and wages was weak in 1988 but strengthened rapidly thereafter—a process that came to a halt in 2007.During the period in which China was a planned economy the gender wage gap was small in urban China, but it widened rapidly between 1995 and 2007. We also report the existence of a premium for being employed in a foreign-owned firm or in the state sector.     

Gender,productivity, and the nature of work and pay: evidence from the late nineteenth‐century tobacco industry

Women have typically been paid less than men throughout history. We investigate earnings in Swedish cigar making around 1900. Strength was unimportant, yet the gender wage gap was large. Differences in characteristics, such as age and experience, and different jobs within firms, account for two‐thirds of the gap overall, and the entire gap for piece‐rate workers. Firms were as willing to employ women as men in the better‐paying piece‐rate section, and women were willing to take those jobs. In contrast, discrimination was extensive in the time‐rate section. Men in this section benefited from greater outside opportunities and customary wages elsewhere. Theory holds that labour market discrimination will reduce profitability, and make firm survival harder, a proposition that has never been tested historically. We find that cigar firms that feminized their workforces most extensively were most likely to survive. Product market competition prevented firms employing (overpaid) men to any great extent. We argue that economic historians must interpret industry‐specific gender wage differentials in the context of workers' outside opportunities, and in the context of product markets, which can—and in this case did—limit firms' room for manoeuvre.     

Losing the thread: a response to Robert Allen†

In an earlier article we used archival and printed primary sources to construct the first long-run wage series for hand spinning in early modern Britain. This evidence challenged Robert Allen's claim that spinners were part of the ‘high wage economy’, which he sees as motivating invention, innovation, and mechanization in the spinning section of the textile industry. We respond to Allen's subsequent criticism of our argument, sources, and methods, and his presentation of alternative evidence. Allen contends that we have understated both the earnings and associated productivity of hand spinners by focusing on part-time and low-quality workers. His rejoinder rests on an ahistorical account of spinners’ work and similarly weak evidence on wages as did his initial claims. Our augmented version of the spinners’ wages dataset confirms our original findings. Spinners’ wages were low even compared with other women workers, and neither wages nor the piece rates that determined unit labour costs followed a trajectory that could explain the invention and spread of the spinning jenny.