Paper #287

Title:

How wide is the gap? An investigation of gender wage differences using quantile regression

Authors:

Jaume Garcia, Pedro J. Hernández and Ángel López Nicolás

Date:

May 1998

Abstract:

In this paper we examine the determinants of wages and decompose the observed differences across genders into the "explained by different characteristics" and "explained by different returns components" using a sample of Spanish workers. Apart from the conditional expectation of wages, we estimate the conditional quantile functions for men and women and find that both the absolute wage gap and the part attributed to different returns at each of the quantiles, far from being well represented by their counterparts at the mean, are greater as we move up in the wage range.

Keywords:

Gender wage gap, quantile regression, education

JEL codes:

C14, J16, J31

Area of Research:

Labour, Public, Development and Health Economics

Published in:

Empirical Economics, 26, pp. 149-168, (2001)

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