Can Personality Traits Explain Glass Ceilings?

Matthias Collischon and Matthias

No 965, SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research from DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP)

Abstract: This paper investigates whether personality traits can explain glass ceilings (increasing gender wage gaps across the wage distribution). Using longitudinal survey data from Germany, the UK, and Australia, I combine unconditional quantile regressions with wage gap decompositions to identify the effect of personality traits on wage gaps. The results suggest that the impact of personality traits on wage gaps increases across the wage distribution in all countries. Personality traits explain up to 14.5% of the overall gender wage gap. However, controlling for personality traits does not lead to a significant reduction of unexplained wage gaps in most cases.

Keywords: Non-cognitive skills; personality traits; unconditional quantile regression; gender wage gap; glass ceiling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 J16 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41 p.
Date: 2018
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-gen, nep-hme and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp965

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