High School Experiences, the Gender Wage Gap, and the Selection of Occupation

Michael Strain and Douglas Webber

No 9277, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Using within-high-school variation and controlling for a measure of cognitive ability, this paper finds that high-school leadership experiences explain a significant portion of the residual gender wage gap and selection into management occupations. Our results imply that high-school leadership could build non-cognitive, productive skills that are rewarded years later in the labor market and that explain a portion of the systematic difference in pay between men and women. Alternatively, high-school leadership could be a proxy variable for personality characteristics that differ between men and women and that drive higher pay and becoming a manager. Because high school leadership experiences are exogenous to direct labor market experiences, our results leave less room for direct labor market discrimination as a driver of the gender wage gap and occupation selection.

Keywords: occupational choice; noncognitive skills; gender wage gap (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J16 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 18 pages
Date: 2015-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-ger
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Published - published in: Applied Economics, 2017, 49 (49), 5040-5049

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Related works:
Journal Article: High school experiences, the gender wage gap, and the selection of occupation (2017)
Working Paper: High School Experiences, the Gender Wage Gap, and the Selection of Occupation (2015)
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