Wage differences between women and men in Sweden - the impact of skill mismatch

Mats Johansson and Katarina Katz ()
Additional contact information
Mats Johansson: Institute for Futures Studies, Postal: P O Box 591, SE-101 31 Stockholm, Sweden
Katarina Katz: Department of Economics and Business, Karlstad University, Postal: Universitetsgatan 2, SE-651 88 Karlstad, Sweden

No 2007:13, Working Paper Series from IFAU - Institute for Labour Market Policy Evaluation

Abstract: We investigate skill mismatch and its impact on gender differences in wage gap and in returns to education in Sweden 1993 to 2002.Women are more likely to have more formal education than what is normally required for their occupation (overeducation), while men are more likely to have less (undereducation).Over- and undereducation contribute far more to the gender wage gap than years of schooling and work experience. In decompositions, adjusting for skill mismatch decreases the gender wage gap by between one tenth and one sixth. This is roughly a third to a half as much as is accounted for by segregation by industry. Thus, taking skill mismatch into account is essential for the analysis of gender wage differentiation, even though it does not alter the result that the estimated returns to education are smaller for women than for men in Sweden.

Keywords: Gender differentials; discrimination; over- and undereducation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J16 J24 J31 J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec, nep-hrm, nep-lab and nep-ltv
Date: Written 2007-06-07

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