A Short History of the Gender Wage Gap in Britain

Alex Bryson, Heather Joshi (), Bożena Wielgoszewska () and David Wilkinson
Additional contact information
Heather Joshi: University College London
Bożena Wielgoszewska: University College London

No 13289, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: After shrinking dramatically during World War Two the gender wage gap (GWG) narrowed again in the early 1970s due to the Equal Pay Act. The GWG has closed across birth cohorts at all points in the adult life-cycle but remains. Within birth cohort it rises to middle age before falling again. Among those born in 1958, the raw GWG was 16 percentage points among workers aged 23, rising to 35 percentage points at 42. Among those born in 1970 the gaps were 9 and 31 percentage points at age 26 and age 42 respectively. Differences in men's and women's work experience in mid-life account for much but not all of the raw gap in both cohorts. The GWG is a little larger early in the life cycle when accounting for non-random selection into employment but selection plays no role later in life. Policy options for closing the remaining gap are considered.

Keywords: employment selection; birth cohorts; labour force participation; gender wage gap; sample attrition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J16 J2 J3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41 pages
Date: 2020-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gen and nep-his
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Published - published in: Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 2020, 36 (4), 836-854

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp13289.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:iza:izadps:dp13289

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().