Robots and the gender pay gap in Europe

Cevat Giray Aksoy, Berkay Özcan () and Julia Philipp

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Could robotization make the gender pay gap worse? We provide the first large-scale evidence on the impact of industrial robots on the gender pay gap using data from 20 European countries. We show that robot adoption increases both male and female earnings but also increases the gender pay gap. Using an instrumental variable strategy, we find that a ten percent increase in robotization leads to a 1.8% increase in the gender pay gap. These results are driven by countries with high initial levels of gender inequality and can be explained by the fact that men at medium- and high-skill occupations disproportionately benefit from robotization, through a productivity effect. We rule out the possibility that our results are driven by mechanical changes in the gender composition of the workforce.

Keywords: industrial robots; gender pay gap; automation; Europe (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J00 J31 J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29 pages
Date: 2021-05-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hrm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (41)

Published in European Economic Review, 1, May, 2021, 134. ISSN: 0014-2921

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http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/109006/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Robots and the gender pay gap in Europe (2021)
Working Paper: Robots and the Gender Pay Gap in Europe (2020)
Working Paper: Robots and the Gender Pay Gap in Europe (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:109006

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