Noncognitive Skills, Occupational Attainment, and Relative Wages

Deborah A. Cobb-Clark () and Michelle Tan

No 612, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University

Abstract: This paper examines whether men's and women's noncognitive skills influence their occupational attainment and, if so, whether this contributes to the disparity in their relative wages. We find that noncognitive skills have a substantial effect on the probability of employment in many, though not all, occupations in ways that differ by gender. Consequently, men and women with similar noncognitive skills enter occupations at very different rates. Women, however, have lower wages on average not because they work in different occupations than men do, but rather because they earn less than their male colleagues employed in the same occupation. On balance, women's noncognitive skills give them a slight wage advantage. Finally, we find that accounting for the endogeneity of occupational attainment more than halves the proportion of the overall gender wage gap that is unexplained.

Keywords: noncognitive skills; personality; occupation; gender wage gap; decomposition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J16 J24 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
Date: 2009-07

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Related works:
Working Paper: Noncognitive Skills, Occupational Attainment, and Relative Wages (2009)
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:auu:dpaper:612

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