The distribution of the gender wage gap

Sonia Bhalotra and Manuel Fernandez Sierra

No 2018-10, ISER Working Paper Series from Institute for Social and Economic Research

Abstract: We analyse impacts of the rising labor force participation of women on the gender wage gap. We formulate and structurally estimate an equilibrium model of the labor market in which the elasticity of substitution between male and female labor is allowed to vary depending on the task content of occupations. We find that the elasticity of substitution is higher in high-paying occupations that are intensive in abstract and analytical tasks than in low-paying manual and routine occupations. Consistent with this we find a narrowing of the gender wage gap towards the upper end of the wage distribution and an increase in the gender wage gap at the low end. Demand side trends favoured women and this attenuated the supply-driven downward pressure on women's wages in low-paying occupations, and fully counteracted it in high-paying occupations. The paper contributes new evidence on the distribution of the gender wage gaps, and contributes to a wider literature on technological change, occupational sorting, wage inequality and polarization.

Date: 2018-06-28
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gen
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/fi ... ers/iser/2018-10.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Distribution of the Gender Wage Gap (2018)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ese:iserwp:2018-10

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
Publications Office, Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, Essex CO4 3SQ UK
https://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/publications/

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ISER Working Paper Series from Institute for Social and Economic Research Publications Office, Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, Essex CO4 3SQ UK. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jonathan Nears ().