Education and Wage Gender Gaps by Birth Cohort in Twelve Countries

• In Event: 095 - Regular Session. Gender, Inequality, and Work

Abstract

Does the increase in tertiary education among women translate into commensurate female wages? Existing studies have shown that countries differ considerably in the gender wage gap. Using selected countries over 30 years, we study whether women’s educational expansion has translated into a closing of the gender wage gap. As education is known to be very cohort dependent, in our view, a cohort analysis is most appropriate. Applying such a Age-Period-Cohort analysis to the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) data, we show that, while in terms of access to tertiary education women have caught up and in many countries even outperform men, substantial gender wage differences persist in all countries. Using the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition, we demonstrate that the role of education in explaining the gender gap has been limited and even decreased over cohorts. We thus conclude that gender wage differences at levels far from gender equality will also persist in the future, even if the “rise of women” in terms of education continues.

Authors

• Louis Chauvel, University of Luxembourg

• Anne Hartung, University of Luxembourg

• Eyal Bar-Haim, IRSEI