IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ecorec/v82y2006i259p408-427.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Glass Ceiling or Sticky Floor? Exploring the Australian Gender Pay Gap

Author

Listed:
  • HIAU JOO KEE

Abstract

Using the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey, this paper analyses the gender wage gaps across the wage distribution in both the public and private sectors in Australia. Quantile regression techniques are used to control for various characteristics at different points of the wage distributions. Counterfactual decomposition analysis, adjusted for the quantile regression framework, is used to examine if the gap is attributed to gender differences in characteristics, or to the differing returns between genders. The main finding is that a strong glass ceiling effect is detected only in the private sector. A second finding is that the acceleration in the gender gap across the distribution does not vanish even after account is taken of an extensive set of statistical controls. This suggests that the observed wage gap is a result of differences in returns to genders. By focusing only on the mean gender wage gap, substantial variations of the gap will be hidden.

Suggested Citation

  • Hiau Joo Kee, 2006. "Glass Ceiling or Sticky Floor? Exploring the Australian Gender Pay Gap," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 82(259), pages 408-427, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ecorec:v:82:y:2006:i:259:p:408-427
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-4932.2006.00356.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4932.2006.00356.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1475-4932.2006.00356.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Eide, Eric & Showalter, Mark H., 1998. "The effect of school quality on student performance: A quantile regression approach," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 58(3), pages 345-350, March.
    2. repec:ilo:ilowps:344117 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Becker, Gary S., 1971. "The Economics of Discrimination," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, edition 2, number 9780226041162, January.
    4. Francine D. Blau & Lawrence M. Kahn, 2003. "Understanding International Differences in the Gender Pay Gap," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 21(1), pages 106-144, January.
    5. Kuhn, Peter J, 1987. "Sex Discrimination in Labor Markets: The Role of Statistical Evidenc e," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(4), pages 567-583, September.
    6. Moshe Buchinsky, 1998. "Recent Advances in Quantile Regression Models: A Practical Guideline for Empirical Research," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 33(1), pages 88-126.
    7. B. D. Haig, 1982. "Sex Discrimination in the Reward for Skills and Experience in the Australian Labour Force," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 58(1), pages 1-10, March.
    8. Moshe Buchinsky & Jennifer Hunt, 1999. "Wage Mobility In The United States," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 81(3), pages 351-368, August.
    9. Chris Sakellariou, 2004. "The use of quantile regressions in estimating gender wage differentials: a case study of the Philippines," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(9), pages 1001-1007.
    10. Jayachandran N. Variyam & James Blaylock & David Smallwood, 2002. "Characterizing the Distribution of Macronutrient Intake among U.S. Adults: A Quantile Regression Approach," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 84(2), pages 454-466.
    11. repec:bla:ecorec:v:58:y:1982:i:160:p:1-10 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Miller, Paul W., 1994. "Occupational segregation and wages in Australia," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 45(3), pages 367-371.
    13. José Mata & José A. F. Machado, 2005. "Counterfactual decomposition of changes in wage distributions using quantile regression," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 20(4), pages 445-465.
    14. Gilbert W. Bassett Jr. & Hsiu-Lang Chen, 2001. "Portfolio style: Return-based attribution using quantile regression," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 26(1), pages 293-305.
    15. Moshe Buchinsky, 1998. "The dynamics of changes in the female wage distribution in the USA: a quantile regression approach," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 13(1), pages 1-30.
    16. Wiji Arulampalam & Alison L. Booth & Mark L. Bryan, 2007. "Is There a Glass Ceiling over Europe? Exploring the Gender Pay Gap across the Wage Distribution," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 60(2), pages 163-186, January.
    17. Dorothe Bonjour & Michael Gerfin, 2001. "The unequal distribution of unequal pay - An empirical analysis of the gender wage gap in Switzerland," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 26(2), pages 407-427.
    18. Preston, A, 2001. "The changing Australian labour market: Developments during the last decade," Australian Bulletin of Labour, National Institute of Labour Studies, vol. 27(3), pages 153-176.
    19. Jeffrey S. Gray, 1997. "The Fall in Men's Return to Marriage: Declining Productivity Effects or Changing Selection?," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 32(3), pages 481-504.
    20. James Albrecht & Anders Bjorklund & Susan Vroman, 2003. "Is There a Glass Ceiling in Sweden?," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 21(1), pages 145-177, January.
    21. Mark Wooden, 1999. "Gender Pay Equity and Comparable Worth in Australia: A Reassessment," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 32(2), pages 157-171, June.
    22. Angel López-Nicolás & Jaume García & Pedro J. Hernández, 2001. "How wide is the gap? An investigation of gender wage differences using quantile regression," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 26(1), pages 149-167.
    23. Meng, Xin, 2004. "Gender earnings gap: the role of firm specific effects," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(5), pages 555-573, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hiau Joo Kee, 2005. "Glass Ceiling or Sticky Floor? Exploring the Australian Gender Pay Gap using Quantile Regression and Counterfactual Decomposition Methods," CEPR Discussion Papers 487, Centre for Economic Policy Research, Research School of Economics, Australian National University.
    2. Dileni Gunewardena & Darshi Abeyrathna & Amalie Ellagala & Kamani Rajakaruna & Shobana Rajendran, 2008. "Glass Ceilings, Sticky Floors or Sticky Doors? A Quantile Regression Approach to Exploring Gender Wage Gaps in Sri Lanka," Working Papers PMMA 2008-04, PEP-PMMA.
    3. Juan D. Barón & Deborah A. Cobb‐Clark, 2010. "Occupational Segregation and the Gender Wage Gap in Private‐ and Public‐Sector Employment: A Distributional Analysis," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 86(273), pages 227-246, June.
    4. Picchio, Matteo & Mussida, Chiara, 2011. "Gender wage gap: A semi-parametric approach with sample selection correction," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(5), pages 564-578, October.
    5. Mohamed Jellal & Christophe Nordman & Francois-Charles Wolff, 2008. "Evidence on the glass ceiling effect in France using matched worker-firm data," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(24), pages 3233-3250.
    6. repec:dau:papers:123456789/4377 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Albrecht, James & van Vuuren, Aico & Vroman, Susan, 2009. "Counterfactual distributions with sample selection adjustments: Econometric theory and an application to the Netherlands," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(4), pages 383-396, August.
    8. Christophe J. Nordman & François-Charles Wolff, 2009. "Is There a Glass Ceiling in Morocco? Evidence from Matched Worker--Firm Data," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 18(4), pages 592-633, August.
    9. repec:dau:papers:123456789/4344 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Zheng Fang & Chris Sakellariou, 2015. "Glass Ceilings versus Sticky Floors: Evidence from Southeast Asia and an International Update," Asian Economic Journal, East Asian Economic Association, vol. 29(3), pages 215-242, September.
    11. Heinze, Anja, 2010. "Beyond the mean gender wage gap: Decomposition of differences in wage distributions using quantile regression," ZEW Discussion Papers 10-043, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    12. Costa-Font, Joan & Fabbri, Daniele & Gil, Joan, 2009. "Decomposing body mass index gaps between Mediterranean countries: A counterfactual quantile regression analysis," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 7(3), pages 351-365, December.
    13. Böheim, René & Himpele, Klemens & Mahringer, Helmut & Zulehner, Christine, 2013. "The distribution of the gender wage gap in Austria : evidence from matched employer-employee data and tax records," Journal for Labour Market Research, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany], vol. 46(1), pages 19-34.
    14. Booth, Alison L., 2009. "Gender and competition," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(6), pages 599-606, December.
    15. Jean-Louis Arcand & Béatrice D'hombres, 2004. "Racial discrimination in the Brazilian labour market: wage, employment and segregation effects," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 16(8), pages 1053-1066.
    16. Ahmed, Salma & McGillivray, Mark, 2015. "Human Capital, Discrimination, and the Gender Wage Gap in Bangladesh," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 506-524.
    17. Carrillo, Paul & Yezer, Anthony, 2009. "Alternative measures of homeownership gaps across segregated neighborhoods," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(5), pages 542-552, September.
    18. Böheim, René & Himpele, Klemens & Mahringer, Helmut & Zulehner, Christine, 2013. "The distribution of the gender wage gap in Austria : evidence from matched employer-employee data and tax records," Journal for Labour Market Research, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany], vol. 46(1), pages 19-34.
    19. Coral Río & Carlos Gradín & Olga Cantó, 2011. "The measurement of gender wage discrimination: the distributional approach revisited," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 9(1), pages 57-86, March.
    20. Dusan Paredes, 2012. "The impact of the occupations and economic activities on the gender wage gap using a counterfactual framework," Documentos de Trabajo en Economia y Ciencia Regional 22, Universidad Catolica del Norte, Chile, Department of Economics, revised Apr 2012.
    21. Zheng Fang & Chris Sakellariou, 2011. "A Case of Sticky Floors: Gender Wage Differentials in Thailand," Asian Economic Journal, East Asian Economic Association, vol. 25(1), pages 35-54, March.
    22. Ian Watson, 2010. "Decomposing the Gender Pay Gap in the Australian Managerial Labour Market," Australian Journal of Labour Economics (AJLE), Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre (BCEC), Curtin Business School, vol. 13(1), pages 49-79.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:ecorec:v:82:y:2006:i:259:p:408-427. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/esausea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.