The Gender Wage Gap in Europe: Job Preferences, Gender Convergence and Distributional Effects

Paul Redmond and Seamus McGuinness

No 10933, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: The gender wage gap has declined in magnitude over time; however, the gap that remains is largely unexplained due to gender convergence in key wage determining characteristics. In this paper we show that the degree of gender convergence differs across countries in Europe. Most, if not all, of the wage gap is unexplained in some countries, predominantly in Eastern Europe, while in some central and peripheral countries, differences between the characteristics of males and females can still explain a relatively large proportion of the wage gap. We investigate whether gender differences relating to job preferences play a role in explaining the gender wage gap. We find that females are more motivated than males to find a job that is closer to home and offers job security, whereas males are motivated by financial gain. The average gender wage differential in Europe is 12.2 percent and gender differences in job preferences are associated with a 1.3 percentage point increase in the wage gap. We find that preferences explain more of the gender wage gap than the individual components relating to age, tenure and previous employment status. A quantile decomposition reveals that job preferences play a greater role in explaining the wage gap at the top of the wage distribution.

Keywords: quantile decomposition; gender wage gap; job motives; Oaxaca (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J16 J24 J31 J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2017-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-eur, nep-exp, nep-gen and nep-hrm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Published - published in: Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 2019, 81 (3), 564 - 587

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp10933.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Gender Wage Gap in Europe: Job Preferences, Gender Convergence and Distributional Effects (2019)
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:iza:izadps:dp10933

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().