Cognitive Skills among Adults: An Impeding Factor for Gender Convergence?

Michele Battisti (), Alexandra Fedorets and Lavinia Kinne ()
Additional contact information
Michele Battisti: University of Glasgow
Lavinia Kinne: DIW Berlin

No 16134, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: While gender differences in labor force participation and wages have been studied extensively, gender gaps in cognitive skills among adults are not yet well understood. Using the PIAAC dataset, this paper presents novel findings on cognitive skill distributions by gender across 34 countries. Despite increasing educational equality, inequalities in numeracy skills favoring men compared to women are pervasive. These skill differences account for a sizable part of the gender wage gap. Furthermore, there are larger disadvantages for women at the top of the wage distribution, which are complemented by lower returns to skills compared to men. We also find that these numeracy-wage patterns are especially pronounced for parents and for those with the highest degree in a non-STEM field of study.

Keywords: gender wage gap; skills; numeracy; PIAAC (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I24 J16 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 71 pages
Date: 2023-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gen, nep-inv, nep-lma and nep-neu
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp16134.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Cognitive Skills among Adults: An Impeding Factor for Gender Convergence? (2023)
Working Paper: Cognitive Skills among Adults: An Impeding Factor for Gender Convergence? (2022)
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:dp16134

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 ().