Cross-Program Differences in Returns to Education and the Gender Earnings Gap

Jimmy Martínez-Correa, Steffen Andersen, d’Astous, Philippe and Stephen H. Shore

Working papers from Red Investigadores de Economía

Abstract: University programs differ in their gender earnings gaps, the difference between the subsequent earnings of the program’s male and female enrollees. A program could have a positive gender earnings gap because the program attracts higher-ability men than women (a selection effect), or because the program increases the earnings of male enrollees more than female enrollees (a causal effect). To understand the source of cross-program differences in gender earnings gaps, we exploit a discontinuity built into the Danish national university admissions system, which provides a quasi-random assignment of similar applicants to different programs. Enrolling in a program with a $1 larger gender earnings gap, holding average earnings constant, does not affect male earnings but reduces female earnings by $0.45. This effect is small as women enter the labor market but increase over time, and cannot be explained by channels related to marriage or childbirth. Our results show that programs that appear worse for women – in the sense of having economically significant gender earnings gaps – are worse for women because they reduce female earnings more than programs with smaller gaps.

JEL-codes: I23 I26 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 73
Date: 2020-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-gen and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://repositorio.redinvestigadores.org/bitstream ... quence=1&isAllowed=y (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 500 Can't connect to repositorio.redinvestigadores.org:80 (No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it.)

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:rie:riecdt:48

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working papers from Red Investigadores de Economía Cra 7 # 14-78. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CAIE ().