Decomposing Wage Gaps between Ethnic Groups: The Case of Israel

Gad Levanon and Yaron Raviv

Southern Economic Journal, 2007, vol. 73, issue 4, 1066-1087

Abstract: Past investigations of the income gaps between Jews and non‐Jews in Israel treat non‐Jews as one group. In this paper we separate the non‐Jewish group into three main religious minorities: Muslims, Christians, and Druze and focus on the northern part of Israel, where most minorities live. Using the latest Israeli census, we find significant explained and unexplained income gaps in favor of Jews. The unexplained gaps tend to be larger the more educated the individual. Jews have much higher representation in the more lucrative occupations, and earn significantly more in them. Muslims generally suffer from the largest income gaps, while Druze have the lowest income gaps, reflecting direct and indirect benefits reaped from serving in the army. Among minorities, Christians are the most educated and most concentrated in the top occupations, which explains why they have the lowest gaps in the highest percentiles of the income distribution.

Date: 2007
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2325-8012.2007.tb00818.x

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:wly:soecon:v:73:y:2007:i:4:p:1066-1087

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Southern Economic Journal from John Wiley & Sons
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().