The Gender Pay Gap Across Countries: A Human Capital Approach

Solomon Polachek and Jun Xiang ()

No 8603, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: The gender wage gap varies across countries. For example, among OECD nations women in Australia, Belgium, Italy and Sweden earn 80% as much as males, whereas in Austria, Canada and Japan women earn about 60%. Current studies examining cross-country differences focus on the impact of labor market institutions such as minimum wage laws and nationwide collective bargaining. However, these studies neglect labor market institutions that affect women's lifetime work behavior – a factor crucially important in gender wage gap studies that employ individual data. This paper explicitly concentrates on labor market institutions that are related to female lifetime work that affect the gender wage gap across countries. Using ISSP (International Social Survey Programme), LIS (Luxembourg Income Study) and OECD wage data for 35 countries covering 1970-2002, we show that the gender pay gap is positively associated with the fertility rate, positively associated with the husband-wife age gap at first marriage, and positively related to the top marginal tax rate, all factors which negatively affect women's lifetime labor force participation. In addition, we show that collective bargaining, as found in previous studies, is negatively associated with the gender pay gap.

Keywords: human capital; pay; gender; international differences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F55 H8 I3 J3 J7 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2014-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab and nep-ltv
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (25)

Published - published in: Esther Redmount (ed.), The Economics of the Family: How the Household Affects Markets and Economic Growth, 2014, 2, 27-66.

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Related works:
Working Paper: The Gender Pay Gap Across Countries: A Human Capital Approach (2015)
Working Paper: The Gender Pay Gap across Countries: A Human Capital Approach (2009)
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