IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/applec/v56y2024i53p6713-6729.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The impact of field of study on the gender wage gap: evidence from the first job offer out of college

Author

Listed:
  • Koangsung Choi
  • Francesco Renna
  • Chung Choe

Abstract

Using a sample of recently graduated college students from South Korea, we estimate the effects of the between-majors and within-major gender wage gap. We use a recentered influence function to decompose the wage differential between majors and find that women face a higher rate of return to the field of study. In addition, women tend to select their program of study with the intention of optimizing their earnings potential relative to men. In calculating the within-major gender wage gap, we control for selectivity into a field of study extending the current methodology to a multinomial logit setting. We test our model using a sample of new graduates from South Korea. We consider six college majors. The within-major wage differential ranged from 8.2% for natural science graduates to 17% for social science graduates. After selection is accounted for, the gender wage gap becomes smaller in humanities graduates but increases in natural science and medicine graduates. Decomposing the selection correction term into explained and unexplained factors eliminates discrimination in medicine and points to reverse discrimination in natural science.

Suggested Citation

  • Koangsung Choi & Francesco Renna & Chung Choe, 2024. "The impact of field of study on the gender wage gap: evidence from the first job offer out of college," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 56(53), pages 6713-6729, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:applec:v:56:y:2024:i:53:p:6713-6729
    DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2023.2276078
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00036846.2023.2276078
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00036846.2023.2276078?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    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:taf:applec:v:56:y:2024:i:53:p:6713-6729. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RAEC20 .

    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.