Ceilings or floors? Gender wage gaps by education in Spain

Abstract

This paper analyses the gender gap throughout the wage distribution in Spain using data from the ECHP. Quantile regression and panel data techniques are used to estimate wage equations at relevant percentiles in a given representative year (1999), and over time (1994)(1995)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001). In contrast with the steep increasing pattern found in other countries, the flatter evolution of the Spanish gender gap hides an intriguing composition effect when the sample of workers is split by education. For high-educated workers, in line with the conventional glass ceiling hypothesis, the gap increases as we move up the distribution. However, for less-educated workers the gap decreases. This declining pattern is even more acute when we correct for selection and remains similarly shaped when differences in characteristics are accounted for. We label this novel fact as a floor pattern and argue that it can be explained by statistical discrimination exerted by employers in countries where less-educated women have low participation rates. Such a hypothesis is further confirmed when the panel structure of the ECHP is exploited. JEL Classification: J16 and J71.

Gender gaps across the earnings distribution for full-time employees in Britain: Allowing for sample selection

“…De la Rica et al (2008) examine gender wage gaps in Spain across the distribution of earnings for full-time workers in 1999 using the quantile regression framework. Given the relatively low labour market participation rate of Spanish women, they sub-divide their sample by education.…”

“…The possibility of a relationship between the probability of women working and their having characteristics associated with higher wages (such as higher education found in De la Rica et al, (2008)) has been long recognised in the literature (Heckman 1979;Buchinsky 1998;Melly, 2006;Blundell et al, 2007;Albrecht et al, 2009). Olivetti and Petrongolo (2008) recently explore the non random presentation of women into employment and gender wage gaps (measured at the median of the distribution) for the US and a range of European countries (including the UK).…”

Counterfactual distributions with sample selection adjustments: Econometric theory and an application to the Netherlands

“…between the genders and a component due to the difference in the distributions of rewards to these characteristics between the genders. Such studies include Albrecht, Björklund, and Vroman (2003) for Sweden, de la Rica, Dolado, and Llorens (2007) for Spain, and Arulampalam, Booth, and Bryan (2007) across several European countries.…”

Raining stones?: Female immigrants in the Spanish labour market

“…Regarding previous works on migrants for the Spanish case, although the gender wage gap in this country has also been studied both from a national perspective (De la Rica and Ugidos, 1995;García et al, 2001;Gardeazábal and Ugidos, 2005;De la Rica et al, 2008) and from a comparative approach (Arulampalam et al, 2007;Gradín et al, 2010), labour market outcomes of migrant women in Spain had not received any particular attention from researchers, who usually focused their interest on the overall foreign-born population 3 . Recent examples of research on wage differentials and immigration, like the papers of Simón et al (2008), Canal-Domínguez and Rodríguez-Gutiérrez, or Antón et al (2010a and2010b), though documenting the issue of the earnings gap between migrants and natives not explained by human capital endowments, do not address the possibility of a double negative effect on female migrants' outcomes.…”