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Gender Gaps across Countries and Skills: Supply, Demand and the Industry Structure

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  • Claudia Olivetti
  • Barbara Petrongolo

Abstract

The gender wage gap varies widely across countries and across skill groups within countries. Interestingly, there is a positive cross-country correlation between the unskilled-to-skilled gender wage gap and the corresponding gap in hours worked. Based on a canonical supply and demand framework, this positive correlation would reveal the presence of net demand forces shaping gender differences in labor market outcomes across skills and countries. We use a simple multi-sector framework to illustrate how differences in labor demand for different inputs can be driven by both within-industry and between-industry factors. The main idea is that, if the service sector is more developed in the US than in continental Europe, and unskilled women tend to be over-represented in this sector, we expect unskilled women to suffer a relatively large wage and/or employment penalty in the latter than in the former. We find that, overall, the between-industry component of labor demand explains more than half of the total variation in labor demand between the US and the majority of countries in our sample, as well as one-third of the correlation between wage and hours gaps. The between-industry component is relatively more important in countries where the relative demand for unskilled females is lowest.

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  • Claudia Olivetti & Barbara Petrongolo, 2011. "Gender Gaps across Countries and Skills: Supply, Demand and the Industry Structure," NBER Working Papers 17349, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:17349
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    Cited by:

    1. Fedorets, Alexandra, 2014. "Closing the Gender Pay Gap and Individual Task Profiles: Women s Advantages from Technological Progress," VfS Annual Conference 2014 (Hamburg): Evidence-based Economic Policy 100362, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    2. Fabio Mariani, 2012. "The economic value of virtue," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 17(4), pages 323-356, December.
    3. David De La Croix & Fabio Mariani, 2015. "From Polygyny to Serial Monogamy: A Unified Theory of Marriage Institutions," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 82(2), pages 565-607.
    4. Claudia Olivetti, 2014. "The Female Labor Force and Long-Run Development: The American Experience in Comparative Perspective," NBER Chapters, in: Human Capital in History: The American Record, pages 161-197, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. L. Rachel Ngai & Barbara Petrongolo, 2017. "Gender Gaps and the Rise of the Service Economy," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 9(4), pages 1-44, October.
    6. Paul Beaudry & Ethan Lewis, 2014. "Do Male-Female Wage Differentials Reflect Differences in the Return to Skill? Cross-City Evidence from 1980-2000," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 6(2), pages 178-194, April.
    7. Alessandra Casarico & Paola Profeta & Chiara Pronzato, 2012. "On the local labor market determinants of female university enrolment in European regions," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 278, Collegio Carlo Alberto.
    8. Helena Koœcielniak & Joanna Nowakowska- Grunt & Agata PrzewoŸna-Krzemiñska & Jerzy Szkutnik, 2015. "International Experiences as one of main Elements in Quality Education," Proceedings of FIKUSZ 2015, in: Jolán Velencei (ed.),Proceedings of FIKUSZ '15, pages 229-240, Óbuda University, Keleti Faculty of Business and Management.
    9. Shirai, Daichi & Nagamachi, Kohei & Eguchi, Naotaka, 2012. "The Impacts of Firms' Technology Choice on the Gender Differences in Wage and Time Allocation: A Cross-Country Analysis," MPRA Paper 56666, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 13 Jun 2014.
    10. Tatiana Damjanovic & Geethanjali Selvaretnam, 2020. "Economic Growth and Evolution of Gender Equality," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 88(1), pages 1-36, January.
    11. Kucera, David & Tejani, Sheba, 2014. "Feminization, Defeminization, and Structural Change in Manufacturing," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 569-582.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials

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