The Evolution of Hours Worked and the Gender Wage Gap: Theory and Evidence from Four Countries

Daniele Checchi (), Daniel Kreisman () and Cecilia García-Peñalosa ()
Additional contact information
Daniele Checchi: University of Milan
Daniel Kreisman: Georgia State University
Cecilia García-Peñalosa: CNRS

No 18265, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We consider the contribution of the intensive margin of labor supply (hours worked above zero) to the gender wage gap across four economies (Germany, France, US, UK) over a long time-horizon. We first build a model in which firms offer two wage contracts – one that pays a fixed wage but allows workers to choose their preferred number of hours up to “full time”, and a second in which wages are relative to imperfectly observable productivity but hours can be limitless. The former includes part- and full-time work, while the latter represents a class of workers who often must supply very long hours but who can then earn potentially unlimited remuneration. We then apply a Oaxaca decomposition for part-, full-, and over-time workers to observe the relative contribution of sorting and remuneration across these hours “regimes” over time and across countries. Through this, we show that while female employment in over-time work increased and the gender wage decreased, this was not driven by increasing selection but rather by a decrease in the unexplained portion of the wage gap over time. We conclude by considering the contribution of unions and labor market flexibility to these cross-country differences.

Keywords: over-time work; gender wage gap; labor supply; Oaxaca decomposition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J01 J16 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-gen and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp18265.pdf (application/pdf)

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:iza:izadps:dp18265

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 ().