IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wdi/papers/2000-305.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Gender Pay Gap in the Transition from Communism: Some Empirical Evidence

Author

Listed:
  • Andrew Newell
  • Barry Reilly

Abstract

This short paper investigates the path through the 1990s of the gender pay gap in a number of former communist countries of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. The main findings are that the gender pay gap has not exhibited, in general, an upward tendency over the transitional period to which available data relate. Most of the gender pay gap is ascribed to the 'unexplained' component using conventional decompositions and this may be partly attributable to the proxy measure for labour force experience used in this study. Quantile regression analysis indicates that, in all but one country, the ceteris paribus gender pay gap rises as we move up the wage distribution.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrew Newell & Barry Reilly, 2000. "The Gender Pay Gap in the Transition from Communism: Some Empirical Evidence," William Davidson Institute Working Papers Series 305, William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan.
  • Handle: RePEc:wdi:papers:2000-305
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39689/3/wp305.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Orazem, Peter F & Vodopivec, Milan, 1995. "Winners and Losers in Transition: Returns to Education, Experience, and Gender in Slovenia," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 9(2), pages 201-230, May.
    2. Elizabeth Brainerd, 2000. "Women in Transition: Changes in Gender Wage Differentials in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 54(1), pages 138-162, October.
    3. Manski, C.F., 1990. "The Selection Problem," Working papers 90-12, Wisconsin Madison - Social Systems.
    4. repec:bla:econom:v:63:y:1996:i:250:p:s29-62 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Atkinson,Anthony Barnes & Micklewright,John, 1992. "Economic Transformation in Eastern Europe and the Distribution of Income," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521438827, September.
    6. Ariane Pailhé, 2000. "Gender Discrimination in Central Europe during the Systemic Transition," The Economics of Transition, The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, vol. 8(2), pages 505-535, July.
    7. Newell, Andrew & Reilly, Barry, 1996. "The gender wage gap in Russia: Some empirical evidence," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(3), pages 337-356, October.
    8. Mueller, Richard E., 1998. "Public-private sector wage differentials in Canada: evidence from quantile regressions," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 60(2), pages 229-235, August.
    9. Brainerd, Elizabeth, 1998. "Winners and Losers in Russia's Economic Transition," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(5), pages 1094-1116, December.
    10. Elena Glinskaya & Thomas A. Mroz, 2000. "The gender gap in wages in Russia from 1992 to 1995," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 13(2), pages 353-386.
    11. Jennifer Hunt, 2002. "The Transition in East Germany: When Is a Ten-Point Fall in the Gender Wage Gap Bad News?," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 20(1), pages 148-169, January.
    12. 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.
    13. Blau, Francine D & Kahn, Lawrence M, 1994. "Rising Wage Inequality and the U.S. Gender Gap," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(2), pages 23-28, May.
    14. Charles F. Manski, 1989. "Anatomy of the Selection Problem," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 24(3), pages 343-360.
    15. Koenker, Roger W & Bassett, Gilbert, Jr, 1978. "Regression Quantiles," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 46(1), pages 33-50, January.
    16. White, Halbert, 1980. "A Heteroskedasticity-Consistent Covariance Matrix Estimator and a Direct Test for Heteroskedasticity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(4), pages 817-838, May.
    17. Heckman, James, 2013. "Sample selection bias as a specification error," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 31(3), pages 129-137.
    18. Cotton, Jeremiah, 1988. "On the Decomposition of Wage Differentials," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 70(2), pages 236-243, May.
    19. Juhn, Chinhui & Murphy, Kevin M & Pierce, Brooks, 1993. "Wage Inequality and the Rise in Returns to Skill," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 101(3), pages 410-442, June.
    20. Waldfogel, Jane, 1998. "The Family Gap for Young Women in the United States and Britain: Can Maternity Leave Make a Difference?," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 16(3), pages 505-545, July.
    21. Suen, Wing, 1997. "Decomposing Wage Residuals: Unmeasured Skill or Statistical Artifact?," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 15(3), pages 555-566, July.
    22. Jane Waldfogel, 1998. "Understanding the "Family Gap" in Pay for Women with Children," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(1), pages 137-156, Winter.
    23. David Neumark, 1988. "Employers' Discriminatory Behavior and the Estimation of Wage Discrimination," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 23(3), pages 279-295.
    24. UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre. MONEE project, 1999. "Women in Transition," Papers remore99/1, Regional Monitoring Report.
    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. Ng, Ying Chu, 2004. "Economic development, human capital, and gender earnings differentials in China," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 23(6), pages 587-603, December.
    2. Jurajda, Stepan, 2003. "Gender wage gap and segregation in enterprises and the public sector in late transition countries," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 199-222, June.
    3. Jolliffe, Dean & Campos, Nauro F., 2005. "Does market liberalisation reduce gender discrimination? Econometric evidence from Hungary, 1986-1998," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 1-22, February.
    4. Barry Reilly, 1999. "The gender pay gap in Russia during the transition, 1992‐96," The Economics of Transition, The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, vol. 7(1), pages 245-264, March.
    5. Paternostro, Stefano & Sahn, David E., 1999. "Wage determination and gender discrimination in a transition economy : the case of Romania," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2113, The World Bank.
    6. Lisa Giddings, 2003. "Continued decline for ethnic minorities in the transition?," The Economics of Transition, The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, vol. 11(4), pages 621-648, December.
    7. Roshchin, Sergey & Yemelina, Natalya, 2021. "Gender wage gap decomposition methods: Comparative analysis," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 62, pages 5-31.
    8. Christopher J. Gerry & Byung-Yeon Kim & Carmen A Li, 2004. "The gender wage gap and wage arrears in Russia: Evidence from the RLMS," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 17(2), pages 267-288, June.
    9. Seneviratne, Prathi, 2020. "Gender wage inequality during Sri Lanka’s post-reform growth: A distributional analysis," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    10. Karolina Goraus & Joanna Tyrowicz & Lucas Velde, 2017. "Which Gender Wage Gap Estimates to Trust? A Comparative Analysis," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 63(1), pages 118-146, March.
    11. Niels-Hugo Blunch, 2018. "Just like a woman? New comparative evidence on the gender income gap across Eastern Europe and Central Asia," IZA Journal of Migration and Development, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 8(1), pages 1-41, December.
    12. Günalp, Burak & Cilasun, Seyit Mümin & Acar, Elif Öznur, 2013. "Male-Female Labor Market Participation and the Extent of Gender-Based Wage Discrimination in Turkey," MPRA Paper 51503, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Daniela Andrén & Thomas Andrén, 2015. "Gender and occupational wage gaps in Romania: from planned equality to market inequality?," IZA Journal of European Labor Studies, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 4(1), pages 1-27, December.
    14. 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.
    15. Stepan Jurajda, 2000. "Gender Wage Gap and Segregation in Late Transition," William Davidson Institute Working Papers Series 306, William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan.
    16. 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.
    17. Karolina Goraus & Joanna Tyrowicz, 2014. "Gender Wage Gap in Poland – Can It Be Explained by Differences in Observable Characteristics?," Ekonomia journal, Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw, vol. 36.
    18. Kathryn Anderson & Richard Pomfret, 2000. "Gender Effects of Transition: The Kyrgyz Republic," School of Economics and Public Policy Working Papers 2000-08, University of Adelaide, School of Economics and Public Policy.
    19. Keane, Michael P. & Prasad, Eswar S., 2006. "Changes in the structure of earnings during the Polish transition," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(2), pages 389-427, August.
    20. 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.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    gender; transition; wage distributions; pay gaps; quantile regression;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
    • J70 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - General
    • P23 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist and Transition Economies - - - Factor and Product Markets; Industry Studies; Population

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:wdi:papers:2000-305. 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: WDI (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/wdumius.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.