Is It the Way She Moves? New Evidence on the Gender Wage Growth Gap in the Early Careers of Men and Women in Italy

Emilia Del Bono and Daniela Vuri ()

No 2523, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper explores newly available Italian data derived from a 1:90 sample of social security administrative records (INPS) to investigate gender differences in pay during the initial stages of a worker’s career. We find that a significant and growing pay differential between men and women emerges during the first years of labour market experience, and that gender differences are highest when workers move across firms. In particular, we find that the most significant gender gap in log wage growth is associated with job moves which take place within a very short period of time, involve positive wage growth and result in the highest salary increases. Moreover, this gender mobility penalty occurs mainly when workers move to larger firms and we show that this is most likely explained by the fact that women value more than men some of the characteristics of these jobs or employers. Overall our results suggest that job and firm characteristics, rather than differences in worker characteristics or across-the-board discrimination, are the most important determinants of the gender wage growth differential in the Italian labour market.

Keywords: fixed effects panel estimation; job mobility; gender gap; wage growth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C23 J16 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 52 pages
Date: 2006-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-cse, nep-eec and nep-hrm
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published - published as "Job mobility and the gender wage gap in Italy" in: Labour Economics, 2011, 18 (1), 130-142

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