Assessment of Labour Market Returns to Gender Unique Human Capital: Evidence from Estonia

Maryna Tverdostup and Tiiu Paas

No 201605, Gecomplexity Discussion Paper Series from Action IS1104 "The EU in the new complex geography of economic systems: models, tools and policy evaluation"

Abstract: Relying on the Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC) data for Estonia as quickly developing economy with high rate of women’s labour participation, we raise a research from a novel perspective towards human capital role in gender wage gap. Instead of usual reference to the observable male-female characteristics’ differences, we identify the gender-unique, non-reached by the opposite gender human capital and analyse its effect on the earning profiles. The results show that men’ and women’ average characteristics cannot be directly compared, as particular features are exclusive for certain gender. We find that combination of high cognitive abilities in numeracy and problem solving in technology-rich environment domains is often attributed to men solely. It constitutes the main component of male-unique human capital, being a strong and highly rewarded competitive advantage on a labor market. Ignoring this notion leads to overestimation of discriminatory labor market effects and thus imprecise wage inequality estimation.

Keywords: human capital; gender wage gap; PIAAC; non-parametric decomposition; Estonia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C14 J16 J24 J31 J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2016-04, Revised 2016-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pr~
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cst:wpaper:201605

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