IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/indres/v63y2024i4p512-529.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Performance‐related pay and the UK gender pay gap

Author

Listed:
  • Melanie Jones
  • Ezgi Kaya

Abstract

Applying decomposition methods to data from the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, we highlight the importance of performance‐related pay to the contemporary UK gender pay gap. We find that the lower probability of females being employed in performance‐related pay jobs explains a sizeable proportion of the gender pay gap, particularly at the top end of the annual earnings distribution. The latter is driven by its influence within the private sector.

Suggested Citation

  • Melanie Jones & Ezgi Kaya, 2024. "Performance‐related pay and the UK gender pay gap," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 63(4), pages 512-529, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:indres:v:63:y:2024:i:4:p:512-529
    DOI: 10.1111/irel.12352
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/irel.12352
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/irel.12352?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
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Thomas Lemieux & W. Bentley MacLeod & Daniel Parent, 2009. "Performance Pay and Wage Inequality," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(1), pages 1-49.
    2. DiNardo, John & Fortin, Nicole M & Lemieux, Thomas, 1996. "Labor Market Institutions and the Distribution of Wages, 1973-1992: A Semiparametric Approach," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 64(5), pages 1001-1044, September.
    3. John S. Heywood & Daniel Parent, 2017. "Performance Pay, the Gender Gap, and Specialization within Marriage," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 38(4), pages 387-427, December.
    4. Monojit Chatterji & Karen Mumford & Peter Smith, 2011. "The public-private sector gender wage differential in Britain: evidence from matched employee-workplace data," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(26), pages 3819-3833.
    5. Christofides, Louis N. & Polycarpou, Alexandros & Vrachimis, Konstantinos, 2013. "Gender wage gaps, ‘sticky floors’ and ‘glass ceilings’ in Europe," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(C), pages 86-102.
    6. Fortin, Nicole & Lemieux, Thomas & Firpo, Sergio, 2011. "Decomposition Methods in Economics," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 1, pages 1-102, Elsevier.
    7. Francine D. Blau & Lawrence M. Kahn, 2017. "The Gender Wage Gap: Extent, Trends, and Explanations," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 55(3), pages 789-865, September.
    8. Barbara Biasi & Heather Sarsons, 2022. "Flexible Wages, Bargaining, and the Gender Gap," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 137(1), pages 215-266.
    9. Oaxaca, Ronald, 1973. "Male-Female Wage Differentials in Urban Labor Markets," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 14(3), pages 693-709, October.
    10. Alan Manning & Farzad Saidi, 2010. "Understanding the Gender Pay Gap: What's Competition Got to Do with it?," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 63(4), pages 681-698, July.
    11. Lin Xiu & Morley Gunderson, 2013. "Performance Pay in China: Gender Aspects," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 51(1), pages 124-147, March.
    12. Muriel Niederle & Lise Vesterlund, 2007. "Do Women Shy Away From Competition? Do Men Compete Too Much?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(3), pages 1067-1101.
    13. Alan S. Blinder, 1973. "Wage Discrimination: Reduced Form and Structural Estimates," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 8(4), pages 436-455.
    14. 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.
    15. 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.
    16. McGee, Andrew & McGee, Peter & Pan, Jessica, 2015. "Performance pay, competitiveness, and the gender wage gap: Evidence from the United States," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 35-38.
    17. Lucy Stokes & Alex Bryson & John Forth & Martin Weale, 2017. "Who Fared Better? The Fortunes of Performance Pay and Fixed Pay Workers through Recession," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 55(4), pages 778-801, December.
    18. 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.
    19. John S. Heywood & Daniel Parent, 2012. "Performance Pay and the White-Black Wage Gap," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 30(2), pages 249-290.
    20. Booth, Alison L & Frank, Jeff, 1999. "Earnings, Productivity, and Performance-Related Pay," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 17(3), pages 447-463, July.
    21. Sergio Firpo & Nicole M. Fortin & Thomas Lemieux, 2009. "Unconditional Quantile Regressions," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(3), pages 953-973, May.
    22. Rachel Croson & Uri Gneezy, 2009. "Gender Differences in Preferences," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(2), pages 448-474, June.
    23. Charness, Gary & Gneezy, Uri, 2012. "Strong Evidence for Gender Differences in Risk Taking," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 83(1), pages 50-58.
    24. Myeong-Su Yun, 2005. "A Simple Solution to the Identification Problem in Detailed Wage Decompositions," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 43(4), pages 766-772, October.
    25. Sarah Louise Jewell & Giovanni Razzu & Carl Singleton, 2020. "Who Works for Whom and the UK Gender Pay Gap," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 58(1), pages 50-81, March.
    26. Philip Murphy & David Blackaby & Nigel O'Leary & Anita Staneva, 2020. "Understanding What Has Been Happening to the Public‐Sector Pay Premium in Great Britain: A Distributional Approach Based on the Labour Force Survey," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 58(2), pages 273-300, June.
    27. Kaya Ezgi, 2021. "Gender wage gap across the distribution: What is the role of within- and between-firm effects?," IZA Journal of Development and Migration, Sciendo & Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 12(1), pages 1-49, January.
    28. Blau, Francine D & Kahn, Lawrence M, 1992. "The Gender Earnings Gap: Learning from International Comparisons," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(2), pages 533-538, May.
    29. Boris Hirsch & Philipp Lentge, 2022. "Non‐base compensation and the gender pay gap," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 36(3), pages 277-301, September.
    30. Melanie Jones & Gerry Makepeace & Victoria Wass, 2018. "The UK Gender Pay Gap 1997–2015: What Is the Role of the Public Sector?," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(2), pages 296-319, April.
    31. Roberta Zizza, 2013. "The gender wage gap in Italy," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 172, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    32. Mari Kangasniemi & Antti Kauhanen, 2013. "Performance-related pay and gender wage differences," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(36), pages 5131-5143, December.
    33. Uri Gneezy & Muriel Niederle & Aldo Rustichini, 2003. "Performance in Competitive Environments: Gender Differences," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(3), pages 1049-1074.
    34. Uwe Jirjahn & Gesine Stephan, 2004. "Gender, piece rates and wages: evidence from matched employer--employee data," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 28(5), pages 683-704, September.
    35. Alex Bryson & John Forth & Lucy Stokes, 2018. "The Performance Pay Premium and Wage Dispersion in Britain," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 86(2), pages 139-154, March.
    36. Sergio P. Firpo & Nicole M. Fortin & Thomas Lemieux, 2018. "Decomposing Wage Distributions Using Recentered Influence Function Regressions," Econometrics, MDPI, vol. 6(2), pages 1-40, May.
    37. Phelps, Edmund S, 1972. "The Statistical Theory of Racism and Sexism," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 62(4), pages 659-661, September.
    38. Stephen Gibbons & Henry G. Overman & Panu Pelkonen, 2014. "Area Disparities in Britain: Understanding the Contribution of People vs. Place Through Variance Decompositions," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 76(5), pages 745-763, October.
    39. Colin P. Green & John S. Heywood & Nikolaos Theodoropoulos, 2014. "Performance pay and ethnic earnings differences in Britain," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 66(3), pages 798-823.
    40. Fernando Rios-Avila, 2020. "Recentered influence functions (RIFs) in Stata: RIF regression and RIF decomposition," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 20(1), pages 51-94, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yannis Galanakis & Amanda Gosling, 2024. "Mind the (Gender Pay) Gap - The role of Board Gender Composition," Working Papers 045, The Productivity Institute.

    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. Boris Hirsch & Philipp Lentge, 2021. "Non-Base Compensation and the Gender Pay Gap," Working Paper Series in Economics 404, University of Lüneburg, Institute of Economics.
    2. Inés P. Murillo & Hipólito Simón, 2014. "La Gran Recesión y el diferencial salarial por género en España," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 208(1), pages 39-76, March.
    3. Kaya Ezgi, 2021. "Gender wage gap across the distribution: What is the role of within- and between-firm effects?," IZA Journal of Development and Migration, Sciendo & Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 12(1), pages 1-49, January.
    4. Hirsch, Boris & Lentge, Philipp, 2021. "Non-Base Compensation and the Gender Pay Gap," IZA Discussion Papers 14551, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Jones, Melanie, 2024. "The disability pay gap in the UK: What is the role of the public sector?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    6. Kato, Takao & Kodama, Naomi, 2017. "Women in the Workplace and Management Practices: Theory and Evidence," IZA Discussion Papers 10788, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Kampon Adireksombat & Zheng Fang & Chris Sakellariou, 2016. "The Evolution Of Gender Wage Differentials In Thailand: 1991–2007 — An Application Of Unconditional Quantile Regression," The Singapore Economic Review (SER), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 61(05), pages 1-30, December.
    8. Joanna Tyrowicz & Lucas van der Velde, 2017. "When the opportunity knocks: large structural shocks and gender wage gaps," GRAPE Working Papers 2, GRAPE Group for Research in Applied Economics.
    9. Sonja C. Kassenboehmer & Mathias G. Sinning, 2014. "Distributional Changes in the Gender Wage Gap," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 67(2), pages 335-361, April.
    10. Bonaccolto-Töpfer, Marina & Briel, Stephanie, 2022. "The gender pay gap revisited: Does machine learning offer new insights?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    11. Francine D. Blau & Lawrence M. Kahn, 2017. "The Gender Wage Gap: Extent, Trends, and Explanations," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 55(3), pages 789-865, September.
    12. Briel, Stephanie & Osikominu, Aderonke & Pfeifer, Gregor & Reutter, Mirjam & Satlukal, Sascha, 2020. "Overconfidence and Gender Differences in Wage Expectations," IZA Discussion Papers 13517, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    13. Fortin, Nicole & Lemieux, Thomas & Firpo, Sergio, 2011. "Decomposition Methods in Economics," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 1, pages 1-102, Elsevier.
    14. Landmesser Joanna Małgorzata, 2018. "The Use of Hazard Models for the Analysis of Income Inequalities in Poland," Folia Oeconomica Stetinensia, Sciendo, vol. 18(1), pages 144-156, June.
    15. John S. Heywood & Daniel Parent, 2017. "Performance Pay, the Gender Gap, and Specialization within Marriage," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 38(4), pages 387-427, December.
    16. Boris Hirsch & Philipp Lentge, 2022. "Non‐base compensation and the gender pay gap," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 36(3), pages 277-301, September.
    17. Collischon & Matthias, 2018. "Can Personality Traits Explain Glass Ceilings?," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 965, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    18. Zhu, Rong, 2016. "Wage differentials between urban residents and rural migrants in urban China during 2002–2007: A distributional analysis," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 2-14.
    19. Collischon Matthias, 2019. "Is There a Glass Ceiling over Germany?," German Economic Review, De Gruyter, vol. 20(4), pages 329-359, December.
    20. Nicola Gagliardi & Benoît Mahy & François Rycx, 2021. "Upstreamness, Wages and Gender: Equal Benefits for All?," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 59(1), pages 52-83, March.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • J33 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Compensation Packages; Payment Methods
    • J45 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Public Sector Labor Markets
    • J71 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - Hiring and Firing

    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:indres:v:63:y:2024:i:4:p:512-529. 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: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0019-8676 .

    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.