Male-female earnings diffentials in Canada: where in the earnings distribution do they exist?
Date
2009
Authors
Mueller, Richard E.
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Abstract
The gender pay gap is the topic of countless papers in the economics and social
science literature. Its study can be traced back at least as far as the Old
Testament (Gunderson, 2006), and debates on the issue in the media and
elsewhere often generate much more heat than light. For policy purposes, it is
converse that is needed most. This research will use the SLID from 1996 and
2005 to determine (1) how the average gender pay gap has evolved over this
decade, (2) if there are differences in the gender pay gap at various points of the
pay distribution, and (3) if there have been changes in gender pay at these points
in the pay distribution over this period. We “link” this current research with the
previous Canadian literature on the subject using the ubiquitous Oaxaca-Blinder
decomposition, followed by an extension of this technique which explicitly
addresses the explained and unexplained part of the pay gap at different points
along the pay distribution. We find that the adjusted mean hourly wage gap for
females has increased about one percentage point between 1996 and 2005 to
about 89 per cent of the male hourly wage. The wage gap differs depending on
which range of the wage distribution is being considered, and is sensitive to the
choice of wage measure.
Description
Open access
Keywords
Gender pay gap , Wage gap , Pay distribution , Earnings differentials
Citation
Mueller, R.E. (2009, May). Male-female earnings differentials in Canada: Where in the earnings distribution do they exist? Retrieved from https://ssrn.com/abstract=2256128