Abstract
The paper studies the earnings differential between genders in Greece employing quantile regression analysis and applying a variant of the selection-adjusted Oaxaca and Ransom (1994) decomposition methods to explain the components of the wage differentials. The results suggest that, in Greece, substantial differences in wages between men and women can be identified. Decomposing the wage gap between genders the results show that the difference in wages is attributed mainly to the unexplained part and to a lesser extent to the employee’s endowment. In all deciles of the wage distribution the wage differentials between genders are not explained by differences in the productive characteristics of the employed but rather they constitute the unexplained part of the wage differential.
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Notes
Various researchers have adopted a different terminology to label the second part of the wage gap. Some researchers call the second part ‘discrimination effect’ and some others use the term ‘unexplained residual’. For a discussion on the issue see Weichselbaumer and Winter-Ebmer 2003.
Experience is the difference between the informant’s age and the age at which she/he started working. A dummy variable is employed to explain the marital status of the employees. The variable ‘Married’ takes the value one if the employee is married and zero otherwise. The independent variable ‘Occupation’ consists of eight dummy variables for nine different occupations (skilled agricultural workers, clerks, craft workers, elementary occupations, legislators senior officials and managers, plant and machine operators, professionals, service workers, and technicians and associate professionals). Finally, ‘Full-time employment’ is a dummy variable, which takes the value one if the employee is employed full time and zero otherwise.
Additional variables not presented in Table 1 are used in the empirical analysis: they include sector of employment, skills, and residence. A dummy variable is employed to explain the sector of employment of the employee. The variable ‘public’ takes the value one if the employee works in the public sector and zero otherwise. A dummy variable is employed to explain the skills of the employee. The variable ‘skills’ takes the value one if the employee believes that he has skills and zero otherwise. A dummy variable is employed to explain the place of residence of the employee. The variable ‘attiki’ takes the value one if the employee leaves in the Attiki area and zero otherwise.
The component due to differences in returns is the summation of the ‘male advantage’ and the ‘female disadvantage’ at every quantile.
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Papapetrou, E. Evidence on gender wage differentials in Greece. Econ Change Restruct 41, 155–166 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10644-008-9046-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10644-008-9046-4