Equal Pay for (Un)Equal Education? A Cross-Country Comparison of the Gender Earnings Gap & Inequality

Alexander J. Parton ()

No 916, LIS Working papers from LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg

Abstract: This paper compares labor earnings at different education levels, specifically as it pertains to the gender earnings gap and overall inequality in 18 high-income countries for working-age, employed adults. It introduces a novel descriptive statistic to show the ”staggered education gender gap” (StEGG), which is a comparison of hours-adjusted median earnings when women have the advantage in educational attainment compared to men. Regression analysis with an interaction between gender and education level, which includes all prime-age workers (part-time and full-time), reveals that there is a negative gender effect for women compared to men at both the medium and high education levels for all countries included. On the other hand, the education effect, in some cases, favors women with high education. The gender effect and the education effect have statistically significant relationships with various measures of overall earnings inequality.

Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2026-04
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:lis:liswps:916

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