Unequal pay or unequal employment? A cross-country analysis of gender gaps

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Olivetti, Claudia; Petrongolo, Barbara
• 署名单位: University of London; London School Economics & Political Science; Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK; IZA Institute Labor Economics; Boston University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF LABOR ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0734-306X
• DOI: 10.1086/589458
• 发表日期: 2008
• 页码: 621-654
• 关键词: sample selection bias; labor-market; wage distribution; OECD countries; earnings; TRENDS; women

摘要

We analyze gender wage gaps correcting for sample selection induced by nonemployment. We recover wages for the nonemployed using alternative imputation techniques, simply requiring assumptions on the position of imputed wages with respect to the median. We obtain higher median wage gaps on imputed rather than actual wage distributions for several OECD countries. However, this difference is small in the United States, the United Kingdom, and most central and northern EU countries and becomes sizable in southern EU countries, where gender employment gaps are high. Selection correction explains nearly half of the observed negative correlation between wage and employment gaps.