The Global Gender Gap in Labor Income

Tewodros Makonnen Gebrewolde () and James Rockey

No 17/14, Discussion Papers in Economics from Division of Economics, School of Business, University of Leicester

Abstract: This paper introduces a new measure of economic gender inequality (EGI) based on the ratio of women’s share of national labor income to men’s. This measure captures both the principles of equal pay for equal work and non-discrimination. Importantly, it can be calculated from existing data and is comparable across countries and time. We show that EGI has only been improving slowly and that current aggregate EGI is equivalent to 1.2 billion women working for nothing. Moreover, this gap is expected to increase in coming decades. Instrumental variable estimates suggest that while increases in income reduce EGI, living standards will have to triple for equality to be achieved in countries such as Mexico or Turkey.

Keywords: Economic Gender Inequality; Global Distribution of Income; Modernization Hypothesis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D33 J16 J71 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gen, nep-hme and nep-lma
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