Swimming Upstream, Floating Downstream: Comparing Women's Relative Wage Progress in the United States and Denmark

Abstract

Applying a new decomposition method to U.S. PSID and Danish Longitudinal Sample data, the authors compare how U.S. and Danish gender wage gaps developed between 1983 and 1995. In Denmark, they find, the wage gap widened, because the worsening in women's relative returns to observable human capital attributes, as well as in their ranking relative to men in unobserv able productive attributes, more than offset their wage gains from improved observable qualifications relative to men's. In the United States, in contrast, the gender convergence in qualifications offset adverse influences, including in creasing wage dispersion throughout the labor market, to result in a narrowing of the gap. The largest increase in the gap in Denmark was experienced by women in the top earnings decile, and the largest decline in the gap in the United States affected those at the top and in the middle of the distribution. This paper compares women's wage progress in Denmark with that in the United States. Women's relative wages have historically been higher in Denmark and the other Scandinavian countries than in the United States. At the same time, wages are less dispersed in the Danish labor mar

Gender wage gap studies: consistency and decomposition

“…If the general model is adequate then only estimators, such as instrumental variable estimators, dealing with unobserved heterogeneity and predetermined variables lead to consistent estimates of prices; this holds under the assumption that the instruments are valid. 14 The parameters of the general model are essential to make inferences regarding the processes leading to the wage gap. Such knowledge is the premise for designing efficient policies aimed at reducing unequal pay.…”

“…Broadly speaking, the findings appear to suggest that differences in the human capital accumulation process explain about one-quarter to one-half of the gap. These estimates are from the U.S. and the lower bound is based on age (Oaxaca, 1973), which may contain 14 In addition, one may need to deal with the non-random sample selection into work. measurement error and hence are downwardly biased.…”

The U.S. Gender Pay Gap in the 1990S: Slowing Convergence

“…Table 2B shows the decompositions of the changes in the gender pay gap over the 1980s and the 1990s. Standard errors for the measured X and measured B effects, as well as approximate standard errors for the residual components are based on the Appendix to Datta Gupta, Oaxaca and Smith (2006). The 1980s decomposition is very similar to our earlier work which covered the 1979-88 period (Blau and Kahn 1997).…”

“…See Blau and Kahn (2004), Table A2 for variable means and Table A3 for regression results. Standard errors of the All X's Effect and All B's Effect, and approximate standard errors of the Gap Effect and Unmeasured Price Effect computed using results from the Appendix to Datta Gupta, Oaxaca and Smith (2006). Are respectively vectors of male and female mean (Row I) or median (Rows IIa-d) human capital log wage regression coefficients and X m and Notes to Table 3: Source: PSID.…”

The distribution of the gender wage gap in Austria: evidence from matched employer-employee data and tax records

“…Examples are Albrecht et al (2003) for Sweden, Fitzenberger and Wunderlich (2001) for the UK, Bonjour and Gerfin (2001) for Switzerland, Gupta et al (2006) for Denmark, Garcia et al (2001), Gardezable and Ugidos (2005), De la Rica et al (2008) for Spain, Fitzenberger and Wunderlich (2002), Beblo (2010) for Germany and Albrecht et al (2009) for the Netherlands.…”