Education, Occupation and Career Expectations: Determinants of the Gender Pay Gap for UK Graduates*

Abstract

Executive SummaryThe gender wage gap has been a constant issue of research in the last four decades but no consensus has been reached regarding its origin. The main two theoretical hypotheses are that: 1)women are discriminated against 2) men and women select themselves into education/occupation with different wage profilesTraditionally, economists have decomposed the gender wage gap between a component that can be explained by differences in the characteristics of men and women and an unexplained component -which reflects discrimination but also model misspecification (omission of variables that do differ between gender but may not be observable to the researcher).This research aims to reduce the possible bias in the decomposition due to misspecification by including characteristics that are typically not available in most other research. More specifically, we focus on three domains and include information on i) the subject of degree as well as educational attainments Whilst previous literature has highlighted a motherhood gap, were the wage gap increases after childrearing decisions are made, here we show that women who have preferences for childrearing have lower wages even early on in their career. Additionally, we find that women with higher preferences for childrearing, act rationally and search the job market with less intensity, which could be the mechanism by which child rearing preferences affect wages.Men and women do make different choices through out their life which significantly affect their wages. However, one should be concerned that the "choices" made by women stem from fear of discrimination, social pressure and child rearing expectations and one could debate whether these choice variables should be included as explanations of the gender wage gap.

The gender gap in pay in company boards

“…Aláez and Ullibarri (1999) analyzed the gender gap in pay in the different regions of Spain, finding the largest gender pay gaps were in those regions where both men and women were least educated and the education of women was similar to that of men (Murcia and Castile-La Mancha) wage gap is narrower when women have more advanced degrees. Similar evidence was reported by other authors (Blau and Kahn, 2007;Chevalier, 2007;Izquierdo and Lacuesta, 2007), who showed that improvements in the level of women's qualifications explain a substantial portion of the narrowing of the gender pay gap.…”

El efecto del origen social con el paso del tiempo: la inserción laboral de los graduados universitarios españoles durante la democracia

“…Nos remitimos primero al artículo en el que se realizó el mismo análisis para la cohorte de graduación de 1999de -2002de Fachelli et al (2014, en el que los únicos factores discriminantes del salario percibido post-universidad eran el sexo y la propia ocupación, lo cual tiene sentido pues en función de la cualificación de la ocupación que se desempeña, el salario será mayor o menor, y el sexo se ha definido tradicionalmente como una variable de desigualdad en el empleo (Brennan y Shah, 2003;Grahama y Smith, 2005;Moreau y Leathwood, 2006;Joy, 2003Joy, , 2006Chevalier, 2007 En el presente artículo, las generaciones que preceden cronológicamente a la anterior, muestran también un efecto de la ocupación sobre el salario percibido, dándose significativamente en todas ellas. No es el caso del otro factor, el sexo, que desaparece en todas las cohortes, excepto en la de 1983-1986.…”

The Sources of the Gender Gap in Economics Enrolment

“…Beyond economic returns, gender di¤erences in career expectations and aspirations may also be important (Chevalier, 2007). We cannot discriminate among these di¤erent hypotheses or evaluate their relative importance.…”