The Persistence of the Gender Earnings Gap: Cohort Trends and the Role of Education in Twelve Countries

Eyal Bar-Haim (), Louis Chauvel (), Janet Gornick and Anne Hartung ()

No 737, LIS Working papers from LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg

Abstract: Studying twelve countries over 30 years, we examine whether women’s educational expansion has translated into a narrowing of the gender gap in earnings when including persons with zero earnings. As educational attainment is cohort-dependent, an AgePeriod-Cohort analysis is most appropriate in our view. Using the micro data from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) Database, we show that while, in terms of attainment of tertiary education, women have caught up and often even outperform men, substantial gender differences in our earnings measure persist in all countries. Using the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition method in an innovative age-period-cohort approach, we demonstrate that the role of education in explaining gender earnings differences has been limited and even decreased over cohorts. We also conclude that, when including persons not receiving earnings, earnings differences at levels far from gender equality will likely persist in the future, even if the “rise of women” in terms of education continues – as the share of women in higher education increases and the returns to education in particular for women declines.

Keywords: -gender gap; education; earnings; age-period-cohort analysis; Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I26 J7 N30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 39 pages
Date: 2022-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-gen, nep-his and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Published in Social Indicators Research (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-022-03029-x

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:lis:liswps:737

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