The gender wage gap and sample selection via risk attitudes

SeEun Jung ()

International Journal of Manpower, 2017, vol. 38, issue 2, 318-335

Abstract: Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to consider a new way of estimating the gender wage gap by introducing individual risk attitudes that is applied to representative Korean data. Design/methodology/approach - The selection bias via risk attitudes results in the overestimation of this wage gap. Women are more risk averse and hence prefer not to be active in the labour market or, if they are active, prefer to work in the public sector, where wages are generally lower than in the private sector. This paper explains the reduced gender wage gap by developing an appropriate sample-selection model, with wage decompositions corrected for selection. Findings - Self-selection based on risk attitudes is shown to partly explain the gap that is popularly perceived as reflecting gender discrimination. Originality/value - It is the first attempt to explain the gender wage gap by looking at the individual risk preference through work status selection.

Keywords: Selection bias; Occupational choice; Gender wage gap; Risk preference; J24; J31; D81 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
Working Paper: The Gender Wage Gap and Sample Selection via Risk Attitudes (2014)
Working Paper: The Gender Wage Gap and Sample Selection via Risk Attitudes (2014)
Working Paper: The Gender Wage Gap and Sample Selection via Risk Attitudes (2014)
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:eme:ijmpps:ijm-08-2015-0136

DOI: 10.1108/IJM-08-2015-0136

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Manpower is currently edited by Professor Adrian Ziderman

More articles in International Journal of Manpower from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().