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When Does Transition Increase the Gender Wage Gap? An Application to Belarus
Abstract
This paper suggests an analytical framework to analyse the joint evolution of female participation and wages across countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the Former Soviet Union (FSU), of which Belarus is a particular case. In CEE, female participation has reduced relatively more than wages, due to greater wage rigidity; in the FSU, wages have reduced more than participation, due to labour hoarding practices. In Belarus, only wages adjust, since (mainly state owned) firms tend to largely maintain their entire workforce. Underneath slow transition and remarkably stable female participation rates (at over 80%), the unconditional gender gap in log hourly wages has increased by a half, while that in log of net and total monthly wages has more than doubled over almost a decade (1996-2004). The Juhn, Murphy and Pierce (1991) decomposition suggests that the deterioration of women wages is caused by negative changes in observed characteristics (due to horizontal segregation) and in the remuneration for those characteristics. Instead, very bland changes in the residual wage distribution tended to reduce (not to increase) the gender wage gap: in fact, women have benefited both of changes in the degree of wage inequality and of gains in the mean female rank in the male residual distribution.
... Horizontal segregation can be observed through the variation of the female share in different economic spheres. In several cases, horizontal segregation is characterised by the overrepresentation of women in low-paid industries (Pastore and Verashchagina, 2011). For the Russian labour market in general, employment segregation by gender remains the key gender wage gap forming factor at least since 2004 (Oshchepkov, 2021). ...
... Our findings on the importance of horizontal segregation are consistent with those obtained by other researchers (Figueiredo et al., 2015;Francesconi and Parey, 2018b;Garc ıa-Aracil, 2008;Kunze, 2003;Liang Zhang, 2008;Pastore and Verashchagina, 2011;Redmond and Mcguinness, 2019). The choice made by applicants, when choosing a major, and graduates, when entering the labour market can be determined by the economic structure of the market and cultural attitudes . ...
... Although the results on the importance of horizontal gender segregation in the formation of the gender wage gap are similar to the results for Belarus, the mechanism is different. In our case, field of study and industry contribute to the accumulation of the gender wage gap and in Belarus, industry contributes to the gender wage gap while the field of education reduces it (Pastore and Verashchagina, 2011). ...
Purpose
The aim of the research is to estimate the level of the early career gender wage gap in Russia, its evolution during the early stages of a career, gender segregation and discrimination among university graduates, and to identify factors which explain early career gender differences in pay. Special emphasis is placed on assessing the contribution of horizontal segregation (inequal gender distribution in fields of studies and industries of employment) to early-career gender inequality.
Design/methodology/approach
The study is based on a comprehensive and nationally representative survey of university graduates, carried out by Russian Federal State Statistics Service in 2016 (VTR Rosstat). The authors use Mincer OLS regressions for the analysis of the determinants of gender differences in pay. To explain the factors which form the gender gap, the authors use the Oaxaca-Blinder and Neumark gender gap decompositions, including detailed wage gap decompositions and decompositions by fields of study. For the analysis of differences in gender gap across wage distribution, quantile regressions and quantile decompositions based on recentered influence functions (RIFs) are used.
Findings
The study found significant gender differences in the early-career salaries of university graduates. Regression analysis confirms the presence of a 20% early-career gender wage gap. This gender wage gap is to a great extent can be explained by horizontal segregation: women are concentrated in fields of study and industries which are relatively low paid. More than half of the gender gap remains unexplained. The analysis of the evolution of the gender wage gap shows that it appears right after graduation and increases over time. A quantile decomposition reveals that, in low paid jobs, females experience less gender inequality than in better paid jobs.
Social implications
The analysis has some important policy implications. Previously, gender equality policies were mainly related to the elimination of gender discrimination at work, including positive discrimination programs in a selection of candidates to job openings and programs of promotion; programs which ease women labour force participation through flexible jobs; programs of human capital accumulation, which implied gender equality in access to higher education and encouraged women to get higher education, which was especially relevant for many developing countries. The analysis of Russia, a country with gender equality in access to higher education, shows that the early career gender gap exists right after graduation, and the main explanatory factor is gender segregation by field of study and industry, in other words, the gender wage gap to a high extent is related to self-selection of women in low-paid fields of study. To address this, new policies related to gender inequality in choice of fields of studies are needed.
Originality/value
It has been frequently stated that gender inequality appears either due to inequality in access to higher education or after maternity leave. Using large nationally representative dataset on university graduates, we show that gender equality in education does not necessarily lead to gender equality in the labour market. Unlike many studies, we show that the gender gap in Russia appears not after maternity leave and due to marital decisions of women, but in the earliest stages of their career, right after graduation, due to horizontal segregation (selection of women in relatively low-paid fields of study and consequently industries).
... While the gender wage gap (GWG) is narrowing in almost all developed countries, it remains comparatively high in many of the former Soviet Union (FSU) nations. In Belarus, it was documented to have increased over the first decade of transition (Pastore and Verashchagina 2011;Akulava 2016). Data remains an issue in Belarus. ...
... M. Akulava BEROC Economic Research Center, Minsk, Belarus e-mail: akulava@beroc.by The GWG in Belarus had more than doubled before the Great Recession, from as low as 8% in 1996 (when the first round of the BHSIE was undertaken) to more than 20% 1 in 2006 (Pastore and Verashchagina 2011); the crisis then widened it further. This chapter provides the evidence gathered between 2001 and 2016. ...
... The Russian Federation and Tajikistan, on the other hand, are characterized by the highest GWG in the middle of wage distribution (Paci and Reilly 2004;. For Belarus (Pastore and Verashchagina 2011), the glass ceiling effect was reported for the earlier years of transition, but from the mid-2000s onward, it was less evident. ...
This volume combines approaches from three disciplines – economics, sociology, and demography – and empirically analyzes the key aspects of the labor market and social demography processes in post-Soviet transitional societies while focusing on the gender perspective. Here, readers will find empirical studies on such countries as Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. The volume contributes to the literature by addressing the lack of academic empirical research on gender difference issues in the labor markets of post-Soviet countries as well as gender inequalities in fertility preferences, gender disparities among the youth and elderly, the gender pay gap, gender differences in employment, and female voices. The book brings together researchers of different disciplines from a variety of countries, distinguishing this project as international and interdisciplinary. The authors use the quantitative survey micro-data approach as well as the qualitative methods of interview data analysis to provide a comprehensive and detailed overview of the economic and social developments in the region regarding gender differences. The volume consists of three parts tackling the following topics: 1) gender differences and demography (family formation and fertility, youth and elderly employment); 2) gender differences and labor market (gender wage gap, motherhood wage penalty, gender differences among freelancers, and women in STEM science); and 3) gender differences, well-being, and gender equality attitudes (women’s voices, women’s collective actions, gender equality attitudes, and spending patterns of housewives).
... While the gender wage gap (GWG) is narrowing in almost all developed countries, it remains comparatively high in many of the former Soviet Union (FSU) nations. In Belarus, it was documented to have increased over the first decade of transition (Pastore and Verashchagina 2011;Akulava 2016). Data remains an issue in Belarus. ...
... M. Akulava BEROC Economic Research Center, Minsk, Belarus e-mail: akulava@beroc.by The GWG in Belarus had more than doubled before the Great Recession, from as low as 8% in 1996 (when the first round of the BHSIE was undertaken) to more than 20% 1 in 2006 (Pastore and Verashchagina 2011); the crisis then widened it further. This chapter provides the evidence gathered between 2001 and 2016. ...
... The Russian Federation and Tajikistan, on the other hand, are characterized by the highest GWG in the middle of wage distribution (Paci and Reilly 2004;. For Belarus (Pastore and Verashchagina 2011), the glass ceiling effect was reported for the earlier years of transition, but from the mid-2000s onward, it was less evident. ...
This chapter provides a comprehensive analysis of the gender inequality on the labor market in Ukraine focusing on the two aspects: the gender wage gap and gender attitudes of people. An extensive survey of the previous literature on gender inequality in Ukraine is provided and the main trends on the labor market in the country and dynamics of the gender wage gap, are discussed. The analysis of the ULMS panel data 2003–2012 using the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition technique allows assessing the gender wage gap in each of the available survey years. Furthermore, analysis of the European Values Study 2008 and the Factorial study 2009 gives some insights into gender attitudes of the population. The raw gender wage gap in Ukraine remained at a relatively high level of 27–33% in 2003–2012 and only a small part of it is a result of the differences in endowments (education, work experience, economic sector etc.) between men and women. The discriminatory practices may be nurtured by the respective gender attitudes. Although the population of Ukraine holds moderately traditional gender attitudes and to some extent accepts the egalitarian views, people generally consider lower wages for female employees as justified.
... While the gender wage gap (GWG) is narrowing in almost all developed countries, it remains comparatively high in many of the former Soviet Union (FSU) nations. In Belarus, it was documented to have increased over the first decade of transition (Pastore and Verashchagina 2011;Akulava 2016). Data remains an issue in Belarus. ...
... M. Akulava BEROC Economic Research Center, Minsk, Belarus e-mail: akulava@beroc.by The GWG in Belarus had more than doubled before the Great Recession, from as low as 8% in 1996 (when the first round of the BHSIE was undertaken) to more than 20% 1 in 2006 (Pastore and Verashchagina 2011); the crisis then widened it further. This chapter provides the evidence gathered between 2001 and 2016. ...
... The Russian Federation and Tajikistan, on the other hand, are characterized by the highest GWG in the middle of wage distribution (Paci and Reilly 2004;. For Belarus (Pastore and Verashchagina 2011), the glass ceiling effect was reported for the earlier years of transition, but from the mid-2000s onward, it was less evident. ...
This chapter examines Tajik women’s attitudes towards family life, employment and power relationship in a household. For investigation the authors conducted a small survey on 40 Tajik women. The authors also utilized large-scale surveys on women in the country for generalization of findings and those in Central Asian States for comparison. There was no research like the authors where they look not only at the gender situation in Tajikistan but at the balance of the gender roles in the workplace and in family life based on surveying of, though a limited number of respondents, this country and numerous surveys. The chapter aims at filling this gap in the research field. Although Tajik women stick to traditional gender role values and household power relationship with their partners, and gender equality is hard to be attained in the near future, the effects of education attainment level on women’s attitude toward gender issues are positive and enhancing educational level of girls likely result in positive impacts on Tajik women’s situations.
... Although women's labor force participation rates declined, they did so at slower rates than men's. This was in part because many women joined the workforce in response to spousal job loss, while others moved into lower level occupations (Pastore and Verashchagina, 2011;Pignatti, 2016). As a result, in the early transition period, the gender gaps in labor force participation rate contracted. ...
... This result indicates that in these countries, the contractions in the gap at the mean have been driven by high-earning women. In some cases, the gap widened at the bottom end of the pay distribution, suggesting that the economic expansion benefitted low-earning men as well (Pastore and Verashchagina, 2011;Pignatti, 2012;Khitarishvili, 2016). ...
... Goldin (2014) argues that the predominance of occupations with rigid work-hour arrangements underlies the persistence of the unexplained portion of the gender wage gap in the United States. Focusing on the FSU region, Pastore and Verashchagina (2011) contend that the deterioration of the social care infrastructure over the last two-and-a-half decades has led many employed women in Belarus to move away from higher paid jobs in the "material production" industries into lower paid but more flexible public sector jobs in education and health; additionally, their working hours contracted relative to men. These developments were considerable enough to widen the gender pay gap in Belarus. ...
The goal of this paper is to examine the patterns and movements of the gender pay gaps in the countries of the former Soviet Union (FSU) and to place them in the context of advanced economies. We survey over 30 publications and conduct a meta‐analysis of this literature. Gender pay gaps in the region are considerable and above the levels observed in advanced economies. Similar to advanced economies, industrial and occupational segregation widen the gaps in the FSU countries, whereas gender differences in educational attainment tend to shrink them. However, a much higher proportion of the gaps remains unexplained, pointing toward the role of unobserved gender differences related to actual and perceived productivity. Over the last 25 years, the gaps contracted in most FSU countries, primarily due to the reduction in the unexplained portion. Behind the contraction at the mean are different movements in the gap across the pay distribution. Although the glass‐ceiling effect has diminished in some FSU countries, it has persisted in others. We investigate the reasons underlying these findings and argue that the developments in the FSU region shed new light on our understanding of the gender pay gaps.
... Looking at the patriarchal aspiration of Belarusian women to rely on a male breadwinner from this perspective, I (Sasunkevich 2015) show that Belarusian economy prioritizes a two-breadwinner family model, which is based on "low wages for both men and women coupled with fringe benefits for public sector jobs" (Pastore and Verashchagina 2011, p. 353). Belarusian labor market is dominated by low-wage positions (Pastore and Verashchagina 2011), and women tend to be employed in the least paid among them. Although Belarusian women continue working en masse, the gender wage gap is constantly increasing (Pastore and Verashchagina 2011) due to remarkable segregation of the labor market in Belarus and women's greater commitment to childcare. ...
... Belarusian labor market is dominated by low-wage positions (Pastore and Verashchagina 2011), and women tend to be employed in the least paid among them. Although Belarusian women continue working en masse, the gender wage gap is constantly increasing (Pastore and Verashchagina 2011) due to remarkable segregation of the labor market in Belarus and women's greater commitment to childcare. Thus, single women and especially single women with children often finds themselves in a precarious position. ...
This book explores the contradictory development of gender roles in Central and Eastern Europe including Russia. In light of the social changes that followed the collapse of communism and the rise of new conservatism in Eastern Europe, it studies new forms of gender relationships and reassesses the status quo of female empowerment. Moreover, leading scholars in gender studies discuss how right-wing populism and conservative movements have affected sociopolitical discourses and concepts related to gender roles, rights, and attitudes, and how Western feminism in the 1990s may have contributed to this conservative turn.
Mainly focusing on power constellations and gender, the book is divided into four parts: the first explores the history of and recent trends in feminist movements in Eastern Europe, while the second highlights the dynamics and conflicts that gained momentum after neoconservative parties gained political power in post-socialist countries. In turn, the third part discusses new empowerment strategies and changes in gender relationships. The final part illustrates the identities, roles, and concepts of masculinity created in the sociocultural and political context of Eastern Europe.
... In addition, while the gender wage gap has been increasing in Belarus, it is smaller than the gap in the neighbouring countries (European Training Foundation, 2017; Pastore & Verashchagina, 2008). The literature has suggested that the gender pay gap in Belarus rose from 18.9 percent in 2006 (Pastore & Verashchagina, 2011) to 22.6 in 2017 (Akulava & Mazol, 2018), and has grown especially large among professionals, managers, and service and sales workers (Akulava & Mazol, 2018). However, these gender pay data come not from the official labor statistics, but from survey data. ...
... However, these gender pay data come not from the official labor statistics, but from survey data. Some authors have attributed the increase in the gender pay gap to an extreme process of segregation, with women moving into low-paid service sector jobs after the state rolled back institutional childcare services (Pastore & Verashchagina, 2011). As we mentioned above, the state plays a central role in securing welfare in Belarus, and pronatalistic goals are at the top of the country's population policy agenda (Stankūnienė et al., 2018). ...
Research shows that even though the time women and men spend on housework has slowly converged in recent decades, the time mothers and fathers invest in childcare has not changed as much. This paper aims to contribute to the literature on childcare by focusing on the two Eastern European countries of Lithuania and Belarus, which took very different development paths after seceding from the Soviet Union in 1990. For our analysis, we use two recent datasets: the Families and Inequalities Survey from 2019 for Lithuania, and the Generations and Gender Survey 2020 Belarus Wave 1 from 2017. The analytic sample consists of 2114 mothers and fathers born between 1970 and 1984 with children under age 14. Our results reveal that in both Lithuania and Belarus, mothers perform more childcare tasks than fathers, and that, however, gendered parenting is more prominent in Lithuania than in Belarus.
... In this function, lnW i is the gross monthly wage of individual i, x i is a vector of observed characteristics, β is a vector of coefficients to be estimated, and u i is the error term assumed to be normally distributed, n = (0, σ 2 ). In Mincer's equation the main determinants are education and experience; however, more eclectic approaches recognize that there are other potentially significant determinants, such as type of employer, occupation, gender, marital status, ethnicity, and region, that may affect the individual's wage (Dimova and Gang 2004;Earle and Sakova 2000;Hartog 2009;Kovacheva 2011;Munich, Svejnar, and Terrell 2005;Pastore and Verashchagina 2011). The earnings equation estimated below includes the conventional individual human capital characteristics such as age, potential experience, and the experience squared. ...
... The educational level enters the wage equation as a measure of human capital and as a determinant of the productivity of individuals. The level of education is chosen instead of years of schooling because the latter is generally a poorer proxy for the quality and level of education in transition countries (Pastore and Verashchagina 2006). An advantage of using dummies for different levels of education is that the returns to education might be different at different levels of schooling (qualifications Downloaded by [Merita Zulfiu] at 06:01 05 May 2015 obtained), which could be captured by dummies. ...
That foreign direct investment is an engine of growth in developing countries is a dominant view in the literature (De Mello 1997). However, the impact of FDI on inequality not only remains controversial, but has not received the same attention, particularly from scholars of transition economies (Vijaya and Kaltani 2007; Zulfiu-Alili 2014). Foreign-owned firms are increasingly important employers of labor in transition economies and pay higher wages than their domestic counterparts, all else being constant. Even though Macedonia has introduced extensive fiscal and business-sector reforms, it has lagged behind in attracting foreign investment, with thus far only a limited impact on employment. Using data from the People-Centred Analyses (PCA) survey for 2008, this article examines the question of whether foreign-owned firms pay higher wages than domestically owned firms in Macedonia, and whether this effect is associated with workers’ characteristics such as education, age, and gender distribution, ethnicity, region, type of contract, and occupation. This relationship is examined first by estimating an earnings equation and by decomposing overall wage inequality into inequality within groups and between groups, where the groups are defined by type of ownership, type of contract, level of education, occupation, age, gender, ethnicity, and region. The empirical results suggest that foreign-owned firms pay higher wages than their domestic counterparts, all else being equal. In addition, a decomposition analysis indicates that wage inequality is higher within foreign-owned firms than in domestically owned firms.
... In the same line, Croce and Ghignoni (2020) found that the only individual characteristic which exerts a relevant role in determining the wage gap between STEM [2] and other types of early graduates in Italy is gender. Finally, Pastore and Verashchagina (2011) found that the GWG more than doubled during the transition from plan to market in Belarus, particularly because women have experienced increasing segregation in low-wage industries. ...
Purpose
After the decision of the Egyptian government to adhere to the Equal Pay International Coalition in 2020, a great deal needs to be done to guarantee ‘equal pay for equal work’. The authors provide a comprehensive, in-depth, up-to-date analysis of the gender wage gap in Egypt, as well as its evolution over the last 20 years, disaggregated by public and private sector. The authors also provide an analysis of the cultural determinants of Egypt's low female participation.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors apply the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition (with sample selection) to assess the gender wage gap at the mean of the wage distribution in the public and private sector. The authors also implement a re-centred influence function decomposition to assess the extent of ‘discrimination’ along the wage distribution in both sectors. An inverse-probability-weighted regression adjustment procedure is used to assess the joint impact of gender and firm-ownership. A female participation equation taking into account gender equality attitude is provided.
Findings
The authors find a sizable and increasing gender wage gap in the private sector almost entirely due to ‘discrimination’. The authors also find evidence of a sticky floor in the private sector and a glass ceiling in the public one. Cultural barriers play a major role in determining female participation.
Originality/value
This is the first paper on the evolution of gender equality in Egypt that takes into account the effect of the 'Arab Spring’ of 2011. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is also the first time that an IPWRA procedure is applied to study the interaction effect of gender and firm-ownership.
... The gender gap has over the years spread through different phases of our daily activities including education (Nguyen and Wodon 2014; Jurajda and Munich 2011;Sax 2008;Amin 2007), internet and computer usage (Colley and Comber 2003;Shaw and Gant 2002;Bimber 2000;Weiser 2000;Teo and Lim 1996), Commerce (Tonin and Wahba 2015; Pastore and Verashchagina 2007;Christofides et al. 2003;Bertrand and Hallock 2001), Health (Oksuzyan et al. 2018;Dahlin and Harkonen 2013;Weidner and Cain 2003;Basu 1993), Agriculture (Berger et al. 1984), Ethnic (Arai and Nekby 2016;Rhodes and Fishcer 1993), Government (Navarro and Medir 2015;Inglehart and Norris 2000;Chaney et al. 1998), Religion (Hajj and Panizza 2009;Sullins 2006;De Vaus and McAllister 1987), among others. ...
Gender inequality is the deprivation of an individual or group of individuals a particular right or rights that are readily available to persons of the opposite sex in the same category. Gender inequality popularity cannot be overemphasized and it is increasing day by day. This popularity has attracted great researchers to delve more into this topic and today, we have a plethora of research studies on this topic. This research aims at performing a scientometric analysis of various pieces of research performed on selected sub-categories of gender inequalities within twenty (20) years (1999–2018). The choice of sub-categories was arrived at based on keyword reputation along with the number of publications in each sub-category as presented in the Scopus database. The results of the analysis were visualized with VOSviewer and Biblioshiny web interface. Publications and journal citation count analysis, influential institutes and countries, key research topics, and author collaboration are evaluated from Scopus bibliographic data. Health, education, adult, income, and poverty are the most prominent identified subcategories. Authors from the USA have the overall highest contributions and 73.57% of the total contributions made in the social sciences sub-category. The country also has the highest collaboration network with the rest of the world in gender inequality research work, followed by Australia and Canada. South Africa is the highest number of collaborating country in the African region. Female, male, human, adult and middle-aged are the most frequently used keywords in publications related to gender inequalities as identified by our analysis. Full descriptions of the output are given in the results and discussion section. This will help researchers, government and non-governmental organisations, decision-makers, and the general public have detailed insights into studies around gender imbalances and make well-informed decisions.
... First, following a long list of gender wage gap (e.g. Bar et al., 2015;Pastore & Verashchagina, 2011;Ugarte et al., 2015;Witte, 2020) and income inequality studies (e.g. Barrett et al., 2000), we F I G U R E 1 Income by gender, across field of study. ...
en Research on gender wage gaps among recent graduates in Canada has ignored the private career college (PCC) sector. By virtue of the structure, composition and positioning of PCCs in Canada, along with the occupations they service, we argue that PCC graduates are an interesting population through which to study gender disparities. Drawing on an underutilized but rich dataset, we perform a series of exploratory multivariate analyses and estimate a gender income gap of approximately 5.3%. Though modest, this gap survives extensive robustness checks, with few notable exceptions. We theorize the implications of our findings for future policymaking and research.
RÉSUMÉ
es Les recherches sur les écarts salariaux entre les sexes parmi les nouveaux diplômés au Canada ont ignoré le secteur des collèges privés d'enseignement professionnel (CPIP). En raison de la structure, de la composition et du positionnement des PCC au Canada, ainsi que des professions qu'ils desservent, nous soutenons que les diplômés des PCC constituent une population intéressante pour l'étude des disparités entre les sexes. En nous appuyant sur un ensemble de données sous-utilisé mais riche, nous effectuons une série d'analyses exploratoires multivariées et estimons un écart de revenu entre les sexes d'environ 5,3 %. Bien que modeste, cet écart résiste à des contrôles de robustesse approfondis, à quelques exceptions notables près. Nous théorisons les implications de nos résultats pour l'élaboration des politiques et la recherche futures.
... The gender wage gap, defined as the average wage ratio of females to males, persists in most countries even though women have significantly improved their education, labour market participation and wages in the last few decades (Cuberes & Teignier, 2014). While globally, the female-to-male wage gap has decreased in general (Blau & Kahn, 2017), the gender wage gap has risen in some transition and developing economies (Liu, 2004;Pastore & Verashchagina, 2011). ...
We investigate the effect of the provincial female-to-male wage gap on household educational expenditure for children in China. We find that an increase in the female-to-male wage ratio is positively associated with individual households' educational investment in individual children, especially the out-of-school expenditures. The positive association is stronger for male children than for female children. Educational investment is more sensitive to a decrease in the gender wage gap among those with a higher educational level or a reduction in the gender wage gap within the informal sectors. However, educational investment is not sensitive to gender differentials in the economic returns to education in the labour market. There is considerable heterogeneity in the effects of the gender wage gap across subsamples. Educational investments in children in senior high school, from medium-and low-income families, from urban areas and from families with only male children are more susceptible to decreases in the gender wage gap. We also find that family income, economic growth and female bargaining power partially mediate the relationship between the gender wage gap and children's education expenditure.
... On the one hand, there are findings that gender income gaps increased during the transition process from communism to capitalism (e.g. Pastore andVerashchagina 2011), Trapido 2007); on the other hand, there are also studies that find gender income gaps decrease throughout the transition process (Brainerd 2000, Jolliffe and Campos 2005, Kecmanovic and Barrett 2011, Newell and Reilly 2001, Heyns 2005. One of the conclusions of this literature is that while women won from the transition in the majority of the former communist countries, there were exceptions, such as Russia and Ukraine, where women lost from the transition because wage distribution widened and women ended up at the lower end of the distribution (Brainerd 2000). ...
This paper looks at the gender wage gap throughout the transition from communism to capitalism and throughout a time of rapid economic convergence. The case of Estonia is used, and micro data from the Labour Force Survey from 1989 to 2020 are employed. The communist regimes had highly regulated wage setting and high levels of educational attainment and labour market participation for women. Although the regime was formally egalitarian, the gender attitudes were conservative and the raw gender wage gap was as large as 41% at the end of the communist period in Estonia. The large gender wage gap under communist rule narrowed quickly during the first years of economic transition, but the further decline in the gap has been slow. The paper has two main messages. The first is that there is strong inertia in the gender wage gap persisting through the communist period and economic convergence. None of the known long-run cultural drivers of gender attitudes can explain this. The second is that the decline in the gap is related to the overall decline in wage inequality, the rise in minimum wages, and more egalitarian gender attitudes. The gender attitudes are responsible for a smaller effect than wage inequality is.
... These attributes had been there before 2008. Sectoral segregation is another factor linked to the gender wage gap and the glass ceiling in transition countries (Fang & Sakellariou, 2015;Khitarishvili, 2016;Pastore & Verashchagina, 2011). The industry difference may be another reason for the glass ceiling in Mongolia. ...
This paper examines the gender labor market inequality by focusing on changes in the male and female earnings gap in Mongolia, a resource‐rich transition country. Economic growth has accelerated based on a boom in the mining sector since the mid‐2000s. However, the gender wage gap has widened substantially over the past decade. We use published data from the labor force surveys in 2008 and 2018 to investigate gender wage gaps among full‐time workers at the mean and across the entire distribution. We find strong evidence of the glass ceiling, but without a sticky floor. Sectoral gender segregation and work–family reconciliation policies may be the leading causes of the glass ceiling.
... age. A second correction is applied only to women with children, as suggested in Munich et al. (2005) and Pastore and Verashchagina (2011). A year per child is subtracted from the mother's age to calculate work experience. ...
... After the USSR broke up in 1991, however, the transition process started to affect women and men differently, revealing cultural distinctions and causing economic disparities and difficulties, and increasingly, gender inequalities became less tolerable (Manolova et al. 2008). For instance, between 1996 and 2006, the gender wage gap in Belarus doubled, and women experienced increased segregation to low-wage industries (Pastore and Verashchagina 2011). The South Caucasus nations (Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia) saw a sharp decline in fertility and a significant increase in the ratio of boys' to girls' births, which has often been attributed to a preference for sons (Das Gupta 2015;Dudwick 2015). ...
This article explores the culture-regulations-gender triad in relation to SMEs’ performance. Using a firm-level panel dataset drawn from 27 countries in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia between 2005 and 2014, we show that women and men experience and respond differently to regulations. Women take regulations very seriously and as a result, their SMEs see improved performance, whereas men discount the influence of regulations which then depresses the performance of their SMEs. However, when women respond to regulatory enforcers, it erodes the performance of their SMEs, whereas when men engage enforcers, the performance of their SMEs improves. The fact that women and men experience and respond to the same regulations differently—regardless of country effect and whether their SMEs are high- or low-performing businesses—suggests that regulations perpetuate gender biases, thus impacting not only individuals but even the organizations they lead. Our study expands gendered institutions theory by clarifying how regulations diffuse cultural values and influence women and men, as well as their SMEs, differently.
... Livanos and Pouliakas (2012), in a study of Greece, find that gender segregation with respect to educational subject explained part of the gender wage gap. Pastore and Verashchagina (2011) find that the gender wage gap more than doubled during the transition from plan to market in Belarus, particularly because women have experienced increasing segregation in low-wage industries. ...
This study examines the gender wage gap in the USA using two separate cross-sections from the Current Population Survey (CPS). The extensive literature on this subject includes wage decompositions that divide the gender wage gap into "explained" and "unexplained" components. One of the problems with this approach is the heteroge-neity of the sample data. In order to address the difficulties of comparing like with like, this study uses a number of different matching techniques to obtain estimates of the gap. By controlling for a wide range of other influences, in effect, we estimate the direct effect of simply being female on wages. However, a number of other factors, such as parenthood, gender segregation, part-time working, and unionization, contribute to the gender wage gap. This means that it is not just the core "like for like" comparison between male and female wages that matters but also how gender wage differences interact with other influences. The literature has noted the existence of these interactions , but precise or systematic estimates of such effects remain scarce. The most innovative contribution of this study is to do that. Our findings imply that the idea of a single uniform gender pay gap is perhaps less useful than an understanding of how gender wages are shaped by multiple different forces. JEL classification C31. J16. J31. K38
... There is evidence that worker flows exploded (Haltiwanger and Vodopivec, 2002) that around one-third of workers changed their occupation during the first five years of transition (Campos and Dabušinskas, 2009), and that in general workers with more skills and 895 Gender gap in desired and realised wages longer tenure replaced those with fewer skills and shorter tenure (Lehmann et al., 2005). At the same time, the formerly compressed wage distribution widened (Eriksson et al., 2013) and wage gaps emerged across ethnicity (Leping and Toomet, 2008), gender (Pastore and Verashchagina, 2011;Kecmanovic and Barrett, 2011) and age (Kovacheva, 2011). There are also studies confirming declining gender income differences throughout the transition process (Newell and Reilly, 2011;Heyns, 2005). ...
Purpose
This paper will study gender differences in wage bargaining by comparing the unexplained wage gap in desired, realised and reservation wages.
Design/methodology/approach
The notion of desired wages is applied, which shows workers’ first bet to potential employers during the job-search process. A large job-search dataset is drawn from the main Estonian electronic job search site CV Keskus.
Findings
It is found that: (1) The unexplained gender wage gap is around 20% in desired wages and in realised wages, which supports the view that the gender income gap in expectations compares well with the realised income gap. (2) The unexplained gender wage gap is larger in desired wages than in reservation wages for unemployed individuals, and that suggests that women ask for wages that are closer to their reservation wages men do. (3) Occupational and sectoral mobility is unable to explain a significant additional part of the gender wage gap.
Originality/value
The paper adds to the scarce empirical evidence on the role of the non-experimental wage negotiation process in the gender wage gap. In addition, we seek to explain one of the largest unexplained gender wage gaps in Europe, the one in Estonia, by introducing a novel set of variables for occupational and sectoral mobility from a lengthy retrospective panel.
... This paper examines the evolution of the gender wage gap across the wage distribution in Georgia between 2004 and 2011. During the period that followed the Rose Revolution of 2003, the Georgian government implemented a broad set of reforms that entailed the restructuring of the public sector, privatization of state-owned enterprises, and sharp reductions in the costs of conducting business (Papava 2012). This period also coincided with the recession, which came on the heels of the 2008 financial crisis and the August War with Russia. ...
This paper examines the contraction in the gender wage gap in Georgia between 2004 and 2011. Behind the continuous decline at the mean lies a change in the shape of the gender wage gap across the wage distribution before and after the 2008 crisis. Before the crisis, the growth in state sector wages and the expansion of construction and transport industries contributed to these developments. After the crisis, it was the contraction of male-dominated industries and potentially the female added-worker effect. In the analysis, we employ the decomposition approaches proposed in Firpo et al. (Decomposing wage distributions using influence function projections, 2007) and Ñopo (The Rev of Econ and Stat 90:290–299, 2008). JEL Classification: J16, J31, P2
... age. A second correction is applied only to women with children, as suggested in Munich et al. (2005) and Pastore and Verashchagina (2011). A year per child is subtracted from the mother's age to calculate work experience. ...
... Kecmanovic and Barrett (2011) find that the gender wage gap in Serbia declined during 2001 -2005 and in that case the fall appears to be uniform across the wage distribution. In contrast to the declines in Ukraine, Vietnam and Serbia, Pastore and Verashchagina (2011) demonstrate that the gender wage gap in Belarus more than doubled between 1996 and 2006 and 1 Some examples include Brainerd (1998), Newell and Reilly (1996), Reilly (1999), Arabsheibani and Lau (1999), Glinskaya and Mroz (2000), Gerry et al. (2004), Cheidvasser and Benitez Silva (2007), Kazakova (2007), Johnes and Tanaka (2008), and Anderson and Pomfret (2003). did so mostly at the bottom of the distribution. ...
This paper evaluates the gender wage gap among wage workers along the wage distribution in Georgia between 2004 and 2011, based on the recentered influence function (RIF) decomposition approach developed in Firpo, Fortin, and Lemieux (2009). We find that the gender wage gap decreases along the wage distribution, from 0.64 log points to 0.54 log points. Endowment differences explain between 22 percent and 61 percent of the observed gender wage gap, with the explained proportion declining as we move to the top of the distribution. The primary contributors are the differences in the work hours, industrial composition, and employment in the state sector. A substantial portion of the gap, however, remains unexplained, and can be attributed to the differences in returns, especially in the industrial premia.The gender wage gap consistently declined between 2004 and 2011. However, the gap remains large, with women earning 45 percent less than men in 2011. The reduction in the gender wage gap between 2004 and 2007, and the switch from a glass-ceiling shape for the gender gap distribution to a sticky-floor shape, was driven by the rising returns in the state sector for men at the bottom, and by women at the top of the wage distribution. Between 2009 and 2011, the decline in the gender wage gap can be explained by the decrease in men’s working hours, which was larger than the decrease in women’s working hours. We assess the robustness of our findings using the statistical matching decomposition method developed in Ñopo (2008) in order to address the possibility that the high degree of industrial segregation may bias our results. The Ñopo decomposition results enrich our understanding of the factors that underlie the gender wage gap but do not alter our key findings, and in fact support their robustness.
... There is evidence that worker flows exploded (Haltiwanger and Vodopivec (2002)), that around one third of workers changed their occupation during the first five years of transition (Campos and Dabušinskas (2009)), and that in general workers with more skills and longer tenure replaced those with fewer skills and shorter tenure (Lehmann et al. (2005)). At the same time, the formerly compressed wage distribution widened (Eriksson et al. (2013)) and wage gaps emerged across ethnicity (Leping and Toomet (2008)), gender (Pastore and Verashchagina (2011), Kecmanovic and Barrett (2011)) and age (Kovacheva (2011)). There are also studies confirming declining gender income differences throughout the transition process (Newell andReilly (2011), Heyns (2005)). ...
... The evidence generated by this research is inconclusive. At one end, Pastore and Verashchagina (2007) and Brainerd (2000) show the mean gender gap increased substantially in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine from communism to transition. On the other hand, Orazem and Vodopivec (1995) find that the gender gap fell (three log points) in Slovenia during early transition and Brainerd (2000) finds that it fell in the Central and East European countries. ...
As Ukraine considers meeting the relatively stringent European Union standards of gender wage equality, we analyze the evolution of Ukraine's gender gaps throughout the wage distribution and assess the relative importance of two explanations: changes in the composition of the labor market and changes in returns to productive characteristics, both of which can be affected by minimum wage legislation. We find the mean gender gap is large (about 40%) and unvarying from 1986 (late communism) to 1991 (start of transition) and 1997 ("end" of transition), but that it falls to 34% by 2003 (after four years of growth), when it is nevertheless twice the mean gap for the advanced EU countries. We show that the decline in Ukraine's mean gender gap is explained by a shrinking of the gap in the bottom half of the distribution but not in the top half, where the gaps are large and persistent across the four points in time. Using the Machado and Mata (2005) decomposition method, we demonstrate that gender gaps at the top are due primarily to differences in men's and women's returns rather than differences in their composition. The decline in the gaps in the lower half of the distribution is explained by a massive decline in men's wages, driven entirely by a worsening of their returns. Women's wages in the lower half of the distribution remain more stable over time; the relative effects of changes in returns and composition differed over percentiles. We also ask to what extent minimum wage legislation played a role in closing the gap; we show that the rising minimum wage in 1997-2003 impacted women's wages more than men's and was an important factor in explaining why women's wages did not fall as much as men's wages. Although Ukraine has not yet enacted changes in its labor code, changes in its minimum wage policy are a step toward meeting the EU directive of gender equality for the lower part of the distribution; nevertheless large unwarranted pay differentials continue to exist in the remainder of the distribution. JEL: C14 I2, J16 for their comments as well as participants of the World Bank Workshop on 'Women in the ECA Region'; the IZA-World Bank Conference in Morocco; the ACES session at the ASSA meetings in Philadelphia, SOLE-EALE meetings in San Francisco, the EALE meeting in Prague and the EBRD-IZA Conference in Bologna. Katherine Terrell is grateful to the NSF (Research Grant SES 0111783) for its generous support. Ina Ganguli appreciates the support of the U.S. Fulbright Program, the Ukrainian Economics Education and Research Consortium and the Harvard Women and Public Policy Program. We also thank Joseph Green, Olga Kupets, and Bogdan Prokopovych for their assistance.
... However, the discussion of FDI inflows into transition economies in section 2 indicates that labour intensive sectors capture only a small portion of the total FDI in these countries. In addition, if FDI is benefiting the better educated workers it might also improve gender equity since, as Rutkowski (2006) and Pastore and Verashchagina (2011) argue, in many transition countries on average women tend to be better educated than men, even though they are concentrated in low-paid jobs. ...
Transition countries have, in general, experienced an increase in labour market inequality during and after the initial transition period. Theory and empirical studies analysing the causes and mechanisms of increasing inequality in transition economies identify globalisation, skilled-biased technological change, differences in access to schooling, the pattern and level of unemployment and institutions as important factors. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has increased significantly in transition economies during the transition period and has been considered to be an important channel for the diffusion of new technology, managerial skills and new knowledge. As a result of technological and management expertise FDI may raise the level of wages in the host economies, improve working conditions and increase employment, though little previous research has focused on these effects in transition economies. Using the GINI coefficient as the measure of wage inequality a simulation analysis indicates that the net effects of FDI on wage inequality will depend in part on country specific factors, namely how large are the differences in skilled and unskilled wages, the skill-intensity of employment in foreign-owned firms compared to domestic ones and the relative size of the foreign-owned sector.
... Instead, there was a signifi cant decline in the female participation rate. In countries of the former Soviet Union, however, female relative wages were reduced strongly, while female participation was kept high due to the continued labor hoarding practice (Pastore and Verashchagina, 2007). In the later stages of transition, the gender wage gap increased, although it remained rather modest by international standards (Rutkowski, 2001). ...
The aim of this paper is to estimate the size of, changes in, and main factors contributing to gender-based wage differentials in Croatia. It utilizes microdata from the Labor Force Surveys of 1998 and 2008 and applies both OLS and quantile regression techniques to assess the gender wage gap across the wage distribution. The average unadjusted gender wage gap is found to be relatively low and declining. This paper argues that employed women in Croatia possess higher-quality labor market characteristics than men, especially in terms of education, but receive much lower rewards for these characteristics. The Machado-Mata decomposition technique is used to estimate the gender wage gap as the sole effect of differing rewards. The results suggest that due to differing rewards the gap exceeds 20 percent on average - twice the size of the unadjusted gap - and that it increased somewhat between 1998 and 2008. The gap is found to be the highest at the lower-to-middle part of the wage distribution.
Parental gender preferences may affect partnership decisions and as a result lead to early life disadvantages. We study these preferences in five post‐communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe, a region with strong traditional gender norms and persisting inequalities between women and men in labour market outcomes. Using subsamples of census from Belarus, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Russia around 2000 and 2010, we follow Dahl and Moretti (2008), The demand for sons, to examine the effect of the gender of the first‐born child(ren) on fertility decisions and relationship stability of their parents. We only find strong evidence of ‘boy preferences’ in fertility decisions in the cases of Romania and Russia. However, unlike Dahl and Moretti (2008), The demand for sons, for the US, we cannot confirm a relationship between the children's gender and parental partnership decisions. This is the case for all examined Central and Eastern European countries, as well as for a number of countries from Western Europe. The cases of Romania and Russia raise questions about other potential consequences of the documented gender preferences. We argue that our approach can be applied more broadly to identify other countries characterised by parental gender preferences, and to motivate further examination of different forms of gender driven early life disadvantages.
Modern women often face an uneasy choice: dedicating their time to reproductive household work or joining the workforce and spending time away from home and household duties. Both choices are associated with benefits, as well as non-trivial costs, and necessarily involve some trade-offs, influencing the general feeling of happiness women experience given their decision. The trade-offs are especially pronounced in traditional developing countries, where both the pressure for women to stay at home and the need to earn additional income are strong, making the choice even more controversial. To understand the implications of this choice on the happiness of women in these types of countries we compare housewives and working women of the South Caucasus region. The rich data collected annually by the Caucasus Research Resource Center allows us to match working women with their housewife counterparts and to compare the level of happiness across the two groups—separately for each country as well as for Armenian and Azerbaijani minorities residing in Georgia. We find a significant negative happiness gap for working women in Armenia and in Azerbaijan, but not in Georgia. The absence of such a gap among the Armenian and Azerbaijani minorities of Georgia indicates that the gap is mostly a country-rather than an ethnicity-specific effect.
In this paper, we perform a meta-analysis of 1599 estimates extracted from 69 previous studies to identify time-series changes in returns to education in 20 European emerging markets. We also examine possible difference in returns to education across the region. A meta-synthesis of collected estimates suggests a decreasing trend over time in returns to education in European emerging markets as a whole. Synthesis results also indicate that the western part of the region tends to have higher returns to education than the eastern part. Both the meta-regression analysis of literature heterogeneity and the test for publication selection bias produced findings that are highly consistent with the meta-synthesis results.
This paper deals with determining whether students of business economics master studies in Croatia are prone to using heuristics in investment decision making. It is assumed that these students have fundamental knowledge of finance and stock investment, indicating that they would prefer to use all available information in their investment decision making process. Research was conducted through an online survey among 223 students of graduate studies from Faculty of Economics, Business and Tourism in Split. Partial least squares structural equation modelling results showed that students’ overconfidence and representativeness positively affect their predisposition for long-term investment decisions, while availability affects negatively.
This chapter is dedicated to the gender pay gap (GPG) in Russia. First, it provides a review of the existing literature, covering key studies published in international and Russian academic journals. This investigation distinguishes between studies examining GPG in the 1990s and those analyzing the later period, briefly describing their focus and key findings regarding traditional economic explanations of GPG: differences in the amount of human capital between genders, family factors, industrial and occupational employment segregation, and discrimination. Second, this chapter presents and discusses the results of the standard Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition of GPG during the period from 1994 to 2018, by using RLMS-HSE micro-data. Finally, it formulates a few stylized facts and conclusions concerning the size, evolution, and sources of GPG in Russia and outlines some promising avenues for future research.
This chapter provides evidence on the gender wage gap in Belarus during the period 2001–2016—after crossing 20% in the early 2000s, there was no improvement in it; this is the main outcome of the research. The authors argue that this could be a sign of increased vulnerability of the Belarusian women, both in the labor market and within the family. It is crucial that policymakers do not neglect this issue as it can have negative implications for the accumulation and use of human capital as well as for population development. This chapter presents an analysis of the reasons behind such developments, and advocates a more gender-sensitive and sustainable approach to policymaking.
This chapter suggests an analytical and empirically grounded argument about the ways to rethink the feminist agenda in postsocialism. My theoretical speculations are inspired by two independent research projects. The first one is dedicated to women’s informal cross-border activities on the Belarus–Lithuania border. It was conducted in 2010–2012 in a small Belarusian town where I collected 18 in-depth interviews with women involved in cross-border petty trade in the region (Sasunkevich 2014, 2015; Liinason and Sasunkevich 2018). The second project is my current research about feminist and LGBTI+ activism in Russia in the transnational perspective. Although two projects have been conducted independently, with different aims and within two different, though tightly linked, national states, bringing them together I aspire to show how a more nuanced understanding of living conditions, choices, and rationales of different groups of women shed light on potential and limits of dominant feminist ideas in the postsocialist context. My examples of the postsocialist feminist agenda are based on fieldwork and interviews with feminist activists in Russia. Thus, this chapter does not claim broad generalizations since the scope of both projects is limited. However, revealing how petty traders conceptualize their financial independence and personal self-sufficiency (Sasunkevich 2015), I try to explain why they do not find their experience of personal emancipation (the influential feminist idea) particularly appealing and instead consider a man-as-breadwinner model as their ideal. Departing from experience of these women, I suggest an alternative way to formulate the feminist question in the postsocialism to make it more appealing to broader categories of people.
This paper examines the labor market returns to schooling in China during 2010–2015 by using two rounds of the China General Social Survey data. While our OLS estimates based on Mincerian earnings function confirm the importance of human capital in China's post-reform economy, they highlight a number of important changes in the labor market performance of educated workers. The average returns to schooling have declined during the study period, albeit modestly. The fall in returns is much larger in urban locations, coastal regions and among women (from 10.4%, 9.9% and 7.8% in 2010 to 8.3%, 7.8% and 6.3% in 2015 respectively). Workers with university diplomas and good English language skills continue to enjoy a high wage return. These findings are unchanged regardless of model specifications and corrections for endogeneity bias using conventional as well as Lewbel instrumental variable approaches. We discuss the potential explanations for the observed changes and their policy implications.
We decompose the gender wage gap in terms of wage distribution in Vietnam during 2002–2014 using two methods. The first method uses two estimated counterfactual distributions; the second uses an estimated recentred influence function. We focus on the formal sector and find evidence for a consistent gender wage gap, with the price of skills being the main contributor. In contrast, labour market discrimination does not have a crucial influence. Some gender equality gained by the distribution of skills can be explained by the rise in women's education and women's participation in specific industries, occupations and the growing private sector.
The aim of this article is to shed light on women’s experience of informal trade on one of the EU external borders: Belarus–Lithuania. The article suggests looking at the informal economy beyond the notion of precarity and to pay attention to how women themselves understand their involvement in trading practices. The author argues that, although economic necessity is an important motivation for women to start trading activities, this experience rewards them not only financially but also through non-economic aspects such as self-respect, solidarity and socializing. Theoretically, the article brings together the discussion of the gendered nature of informal work with the feminist theory of agency. It shows that women’s experience of informal cross-border trade is agentive. Trade provides women with a sense of pride, self-confidence and respect and enables them to recognize their self-sufficiency. However, it is also argued that agency is not synonymous with autonomy and individualism. Theoretically and empirically, the article stresses a relational understanding of agency. On the one hand, women acknowledge their financial achievements as the capability to take proper care of their children, especially in situations when the second breadwinner is absent. On the other hand, they also value their trading experience as a space of socializing with other women. The success of cross-border trade depends on the sense of solidarity and collective action to resist the system represented by customs and border control.
SOMMARIO: 1. Introduzione. – 2. Alcuni fatti stilizzati. – 3. Breve rassegna di letteratura. – 4. Metodologia e dati. – risultati. – Con-clusioni. 1. Introduzione
Tra gli economisti vi è una certa riluttanza ad ammettere l'influenza che la cultura ed, in particolare, la religione pro-ducono sulle scelte economiche degli individui. Questa ri-luttanza allontana la scienza economica dalle altre scienze sociali, oltre che dal modo comune di sentire, e determina una difficoltà a spiegare alcuni aspetti della vita reale. Molte storie reali offrono esempi tra i quali scegliere e suggeriscono come il comportamento femminile, in partico-lare nel mercato del lavoro, sia drammaticamente influenza-to dalle credenze religiose delle donne, ma anche da quelle dei loro genitori e dei loro mariti. Da un lato, una comune accusa di alcuni cittadini dell'U-nione Europea (UE da ora) agli immigrati, per esempio, o ai paesi appartenenti alle nazioni del Nord Africa, è che la lo- Traduzione dall'inglese a cura di IDA BARONE.
The collapse of the Soviet Union initiated an unprecedented social and economic transformation of the successor countries and altered the gender balance in a region that counted gender equality as one of the key legacies of its socialist past. The transition experience of the region has amply demonstrated that the changes in the gender balance triggered by economic shifts are far from obvious, and that economic expansion and women's economic empowerment do not always go hand in hand. Therefore, active measures to enhance women’s economic empowerment should be of central concern to the policy dialogue aimed at poverty and inequality reduction and inclusive growth. In this paper, we establish the current state of various dimensions of gender inequalities and their past dynamics in the countries of Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan), South Caucasus (Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia), and Western CIS (Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine), and propose steps aimed at reducing those inequalities in the context of inclusive growth, decent job creation, and economic empowerment.
The emphasis on economic and social equality was a hallmark of the socialist ideology. The countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union were actually able to maintain remarkably equal distributions of income under central planning, and were often identified as the most equal countries in the world (Atkinson and Micklewright, 1992). Yet, notable forms of disparity in living standards — associated with neither monetary flows nor property rights and thus invisible to statistics — certainly existed, and often reflected the position of individuals in the political sphere (Milanovic, 1998). The transition into market-based capitalistic systems entailed a widening of all forms of inequality (Aristei and Perugini, 2012); among them, gender disparities and their evolution played a not inconsiderable role. The crisis that started in 2008 played an additional role in reshaping the gender earnings gap patterns in the region.
Natural resources promise wealth. In many resource states, however, this hope was not fulfilled. Therefore, the theory of the resource curse posits a connection between resource abundance and distorted economics and politics. But an empirical comparison of the post-Soviet states does not confirm such a connection. Corruption flourishes to the same extent in Turkmenistan, a country rich in natural gas, as in Kyrgyzstan, a country with few resources; Russia's rulers are just as authoritarian as Armenia's. If an abundance in resources does nonetheless impede modernisation, a change in the short-term is not to be expected: the post-Soviet resource states will go on producing oil and natural gas for decades to come and will thus be able to generate large profits.
Using counterfactual decompositions combined with quantile regression, we investigate the pattern of gender wage differentials in Asian and Latin American countries and combine the findings with existing evidence for European and other mostly developed countries. While in the group of Latin American countries glass ceilings are prevalent, no clear evidence of glass ceilings is found in the group of Asian countries where, generally, sticky floors or a mixed pattern is the norm. The findings are robust with as well as without occupation controls. In addition, analysis by sector points to glass ceilings in the public sector in most countries, while in the private sector the patterns vary. Combining the new evidence from the present study with existing evidence (in total we consider 60 countries), a comprehensive global picture of gender wage differentials is provided. Possible explanations for differences in patterns of gender wage differentials are discussed.
We study gender pay inequality in ten Central and Eastern EU countries before (2007) and during the economic crisis (2009) using quantile regression methods. The analysis reveals remarkable cross-country diversity in levels and patterns of the gender gap along the earnings distribution; for the majority of the countries the crisis is associated with declining male/female disparities. We address the role played by labour market institutions in shaping the observed gender pay gap levels and patterns. Labour market deregulation increases gender inequality at the middle and at the top of the pay distribution, but reduces disparities at the bottom. Higher union density and wage coordination reduce the pay gap, with stronger equalizing effects on better-paid jobs. The crisis seems to weaken the already poor role of institutions in the low-pay sector.
This study examines the determinants of births in Belarus in 1996–2007 by using detailed micro‐data from the Belarusian Household Budget Surveys (BHBS). The existing literature offers several explanations of the recent trends in fertility in Belarus and in other former Soviet Union countries. It is often argued that the collapse of the Soviet Union and the concomitant economic instability reduced fertility in the 1990s, while economic growth and stabilization were responsible for its recovery since 2005. We evaluate these and other hypotheses by looking at the determinants of the first, second and third births, separately for women aged below 30 years of age and above 30 years of age. We provide evidence on the presence and the relative importance of the economic determinants, including income and wages, economic uncertainty, maternity and child‐care benefits. Our findings could inform demographic policies in Belarus and in other transitional countries.
Very little is known about gender wage disparities in Kosovo and, to date, nothing is known about how such wage disparities evolve over time, particularly during the first few years spent by young workers in the labor market. More generally, not much is known about gender wage gaps in early career worldwide, a period which is perceived to be an important determinant of the overall gender wage disparity. This paper analyzes data from the School-to-Work Transition (SWT) survey, an unusual survey conducted by the ILO between 2004 and 2006 in eight countries, including Kosovo, that documents the labor market experiences of the youngest age segment in the labor force (age 15–25 years). The results of the analysis suggest that, on average, women have lower education attainment than men but this educational disparity is masked among the sample of employed men and women who tend to be well-educated. The consequences of this dramatic segmentation of labor market participation are striking. On average, there is little or no gender wage gap. The results of the Juhn et al. (J Polit Econ 101:410–442, 1993) decomposition analysis reveals that gender wage differences are almost entirely driven by differences in characteristics (rather than either the returns to those characteristics or the residual). The greater average educational attainment of employed women, among other characteristics, tends to fully offset the gender wage gap. Not surprisingly, the returns to women’s education among employed women are low because there is little variation in educational attainment among the sample of well-educated employed women. When the analysis controls for sample selection bias and heterogeneity, the returns to women’s education rise, confirming the lower productivity-related characteristics of non-employed women compared to employed women. The relatively small sample constrains a fuller analysis of the emergence of the gender wage gap, which, according to a small but growing international literature, typically materializes during childbearing years.
JEL codes
I21, J13, J15, J16, J24, J31, J7, P30
The Chernobyl nuclear accident of 1986 had deleterious health consequences for the population of Belarus, especially for those
who were children at the time of the disaster. Using the 2003–2008 waves of the Belarusian Household Survey of Income and
Expenditure (BHSIE), we estimate the effect of radiation exposure on the health, education, and labor market outcomes among
cohorts and areas affected by the accident, utilizing the nuclear accident as a natural experiment. We find that young individuals
who came from the most contaminated areas had worse health, were less likely to hold university degrees, were less likely
to be employed, and had lower wages compared to those who were older at the time of the accident and who came from less contaminated
areas.
KeywordsChernobyl–Belarus–Health–Education–Wage–Employment
Purpose
The paper's aim is to study the determinants of gender differences in early career in Mongolia, one of the 50 poorest countries of the world.
Design/methodology/approach
The analysis takes advantage of an ad hoc school to work survey (SWTS) on young people aged 15‐29 years carried out in 2006. Extended and augmented Mincerian earning equations are run and then the Juhn‐Murphy‐Pierce (JMP) decomposition method is applied to them to disentangle the quantity effect, the price effect and the residual wage distribution.
Findings
On average, female wages are not lower than those of males. However, although not statistically significant among teenagers (15‐19), the conditional gender gap becomes significant and sizeable for the over‐20s. The JMP decomposition shows that most of the gap is due to differences in the way the market values the same characteristics of men and women: in fact, quantity effects tend to reduce, whereas price effects tend to increase the gap. If wages were paid equally, women should have 11.7 per cent more for their higher education attainment and overall 22 per cent more, a substantial gap for the low earnings of Mongolians.
Research limitations/implications
Future research should assess the impact of aspirations of young people on their labour market choices.
Practical implications
The analysis shows that gender differences emerge in concomitance with women establishing a household and giving birth, suggesting that the current interventions to help mothers cope with maternity are insufficient. Changing this outcome is important to reach the Millennium Development Goals.
Originality/value
Labour market issues in Mongolia are under‐studied, not to mention gender differences in early career. This paper fills some of the gaps.
Using unique personnel data from one Russian firm for the years 1997 to 2002 we study the size, development and determinants of the gender earnings gap in an internal labor market during late transition. The gap is sizable but declines strongly over the entire period. Gender earnings differentials are largest for production workers who constitute the largest employee group in the firm. Various decompositions show that these differentials and their dynamics remain largely unexplained by observable characteristics at the mean and across the wage distribution. Our analysis also reveals that the earnings differentials for production workers largely stem from job assignment, as women are predominately assigned to lower paid jobs. Earnings gaps within job levels are small and almost fully explained by observed characteristics.
This paper proposes estimators of unconditional distribution functions in the presence of covariates. The methods are based on the estimation of the conditional distribution by (parametric or nonparametric) quantile regression. The conditional distribution is then integrated over the range of the covariates, allowing for the estimation of counterfactual distributions. In the parametric settings, we propose an extension of the Oaxaca (1973) / Blinder (1973) decomposition of means to the full distribution. In the nonparametric setting, we develop an efficient local-linear regression estimator for quantile treatment effects. We show root n consistency and asymptotic normality of the estimators and present analytical estimators of their variance. Monte-Carlo simulations show that the procedures perform well in finite samples. An application to the black-white wage gap illustrates the usefulness of the estimators.
This paper uses new micro data from the Ukrainian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (ULMS) to examine the gender gaps across the distribution of wages in Ukraine during communism (1986), the start of transition (1991), and after Ukraine started to be considered a market economy (2003). We find
that the gender pay gap is higher in the top half of the distribution than at the bottom half and that this ???glass ceiling??? is persistent across the three points in time, while the wage floor rose for women in 2003.
Closer inspection of two sectors ??? the private and the public ??? reveals the striking finding that the glass ceiling is lower in the public than in the private sector but the floor is the same. We use the Machado and Mata (2004) method to create counterfactuals that advance our knowledge of which factors are driving these differences; we find that the differences in men???s and women???s rewards (??s) rather than
differences in their productive characteristics (Xs) explain most of the wage gap throughout the distribution. The different ceilings in the public and private sectors are largely due to differences in
men???s and women???s productive characteristics, which favor men in the public and women in the private sector. The fall in the gender gap in the lower part of the distribution from 1986 to 2003 is explained partially by the improvement in women???s productive characteristics and partially by the worsening in men???s rewards in the bottom half of the distribution over time. However, probably the most important
reason for the reduction in the gap at the bottom of the distribution over time is that the value of the minimum wage was set relatively high in 2003 and it raised the wage floor for more women than men.
Given falling birth rates, ageing baby boomers approaching retirement age as well as a pension crisis in most advanced economies, understanding the characteristics of the labour supply function of the elderly have taken on a new significance. Even in developing countries, with labour surplus economies, this is a major issue as these poor countries try to build a pension scheme with at least a minimum amount of state provision for the elderly. What motivates retired people to enter or continue in the labour force is the focus of our analysis. We use panel data from Korea which is an interesting country since it transited from developing to developed economy status within the last few decades and therefore exhibits characteristics of both underdevelopment and economic advancement. The econometric methods include probit models of: pooled data; panel data with random effects; and 2SCML, to allow for possible endogeneity bias induced by the self-declared health status of the elderly. We stress the crucial importance of pecuniary and non-pecuniary factors in determining labour supply of the elderly. Contrary to expectations, non-pecuniary factors such as health status are crucial in the decision-making process of whether to work or not to work for the elderly.
The decomposition of wage residuals into standard deviation and percentile ranks can be misleading because the two measures are not necessarily independent. With rising wage inequality, the mean percentile rank of low-wage groups will rise simply because more dispersed distributions have thicker tails. This interpretation is consistent with the observed stability of gender and racial wage gaps. In contrast, the unmeasured skill interpretation of wage residuals would predict widening wage gaps in the face of rising wage inequality, unless one posits an increase in the level of unobserved skill for women and blacks. Copyright 1997 by University of Chicago Press.
Changes in women's relative wages and employment are analyzed, using social security data from Slovenia (1987-1992) and a retrospective labor force survey in Estonia (1989-1994). Estonia adopted liberal labor market policies. Slovenia took an interventionist approach. Nevertheless, relative wages for women rose in both countries. Factors favoring women included: returns to human capital rose in transition, benefiting women; relative labor demand shifted toward predominantly female sectors; low-wage women had a disproportionate incentive to exit the labor market, especially in Estonia. However, women were less mobile across jobs in both countries, so men disproportionately filled new jobs in expanding sectors.
The authors analyze changes in women's relative wages, using social security data from Slovenia (1987-92) and a retrospective survey of Estonia's labor force (1989-94). Estonia adopted liberal labor market policies. Slovenia took an interventionist approach. Nevertheless, relative wages for women rose in both countries. Actually, real wages fell for both men and women, but women lost less than men did. Certain factorfavored women: 1) Returns to human capital rose during the transition. 2) Relative labor demand shifted toward predominantly female sectors (health, education, financial services, retail trade) and away from traditionally male sectors (agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation). 3) Women with low wages had a disproportionate incentive to exit the labor market, especially in Estonia. Women were less mobile across jobs in both countries, however, so men disproportionately filled new jobs in expanding sectors. Women who remained employed had higher average education levels. Women's relative immobility will tend to reduce their early relative gains. Their relative wages will also continue to fall if their share of the expanding sectors continue to fall.
This paper examines the implications of the standard Heckman (Heckit) correction for selectivity bias in wage and earnings functions that are subsequently used in wage decompositions. Even when justified, Heckit selectivity correction introduces some fundamental ambiguities in the context of wage decompositions. The ambiguities arise from group differences in the selection term which consists of a parameter multiplied by the Inverse Mills Ratio (IMR). The parameter is identified as the product of the standard deviation of the errors in the wage equation and the correlation between the wage equation error and the selection equation error. How should group differences in these parameters be interpreted in terms of structural differences and endowment effects? The same issue arises with respect to group differences in the IMR which reflect nonlinear group differences in the determinants of selection and in the probit coefficients. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 2004
This paper evaluates the impact of economic and legal variables on wage differentials between men and women. Since Becker (1957) economists have argued that competitive markets eliminate discrimination in the long run. On the other hand, practically all countries have enacted some sort of law mandating equal treatment of men and women. This paper uses a new international data set on the gender wage gap, which is constructed via a meta-analysis of existing studies. The findings show that both increased competition and the enactment of equal treatment laws reduce the gender wage gap.
Using Michigan Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) data, the authors study the slowdown in the convergence of female and male wages in the 1990s compared to the 1980s. They find that changes in human capital did not contribute to the slowdown, since women's relative human capital improved comparably in the two decades. Occupational upgrading and deunionization had a larger positive effect on women's relative wages in the 1980s than in the 1990s, explaining part of the slower 1990s convergence. However, the largest factor was a much faster reduction of the "unexplained" gender wage gap in the 1980s than in the 1990s. The evidence suggests that changes in labor force selectivity, changes in gender differences in unmeasured characteristics and in labor market discrimination, and changes in the favorableness of demand shifts each may have contributed to the slowing convergence of the unexplained gender pay gap.
Using data from the Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS), the first nationally representative household survey in the Russian Federation, the author examines the gender earnings differential in Russia during the country's transition to a market economy. The gender wage ratio is calculated at 71.7%, and most of the difference is found to be attributable to occupational and industrial employment segregation by gender. The author argues that the lower pay in "female" industries and occupations is determined by the interaction of the institutional factors inherited from the Soviet past with the forces of the emerging market. (Abstract courtesy JSTOR.)
Discrimination, if it is inefficient, can be eliminated by competition. In most countries, it is also forbidden by law. This paper evaluates the influence of economic and legal factors on the portion of male-female wage differentials that is not explained by other worker characteristics and may be due to discrimination. We use a new international data set of suitable gender wage gap measures, constructed from the results of existing studies. Meta-analysis of the data shows that increased competition and adoption of international conventions concerning equal treatment laws both reduce gender wage gaps, while legislation that prevents women from performing strenuous or dangerous jobs tends to increase it.
— Doris Weichselbaumer and Rudolf Winter-Ebmer
This paper analyses the gender wage gaps by education throughout the wage distribution in Spain using individual data from the ECHP (1999). Quantile regressions are used to estimate the wage returns to the different characteristics at the more relevant percentiles and a suitable version of the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition is then implemented to estimate the component of the gender gap not explained by different characteristics. Our main findings are twofold. First, in contrast with the steep pattern found for other countries, the flatter evolution of the gap found in Spain hides a composition effect when the sample is split by education. On the one hand, for the group with college/tertiary education, we find a higher unexplained gap at the top than at the bottom of the distribution, in accordance with the conventional glass ceiling hypothesis. On the other, for the group with lower education, the gap is much higher at the bottom than at the top of the distribution. We label this novel pattern as glass floors and argue that it is due to statistical discrimination exerted by employers in view of the low participation rate of women in this group. Such a hypothesis is confirmed when using the panel structure of the ECHP.
This paper discusses the implication of recent results on the structure of gender wage gaps in transition economies for the literature on gender segregation. Differences in employment rates of low-wage women driven by initial transition policies may be responsible for different wage penalties to predominantly female occupations. New evidence presented here also suggests that the introduction of Western-type anti-discrimination policies has had little immediate effect on the structure of female-male wage differences. (JEL: J3, J7, P3)
Understanding of welfare states has been much enriched by comparative work on welfare regimes and gender. This book uses these debates to illuminate the changing gender regimes in countries of Central and Eastern Europe. It has particular significance as countries in the region make the transition from communism and into a European Union that has issues of women’s employment, work-life balance, and gender equality at the heart of its social policy. The analysis draws on quantitative comparative data, and on rich qualitative data from a new study of mothers in Polish households, illuminating the effects of changing welfare and gender relations from the perspective of those most directly affected - mothers of young children. This book is an important addition to the literature and is recommended to academics and students interested in the study of gender relations, welfare states, and international and comparative European social policy. The insights gained will also be of value to those engaged in welfare policy and practice.
Regressions explaining the wage rates of white males, black males, and white females are used to analyze the white-black wage differential among men and the male-female wage differential among whites. A distinction is drawn between reduced form and structural wage equations, and both are estimated. They are shown to have very different implications for analyzing the white-black and male-female wage differentials. When the two sets of estimates are synthesized, they jointly imply that 70 percent of the overall race differential and 100 percent of the overall sex differential are ultimately attributable to discrimination of various sorts.
This paper explores the link between rising wage dispersion in Russia over the transitional period and the gender pay gap. The work of Blau and Kahn (1996) emphasized a role for 'wage structure' in the determination of the gender pay gap, although some interpretational issues concerning their methodology have been raised recently by Suen (1997). The unadjusted gender pay gap between 1992 and 1996 exhibited some degree of stability, but the analysis presented identified increased wage dispersion as a modest agent for the widening of the gap in Russia. Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) estimates for an equation pooling observations from both gender groups, registered no statistical difference in the mean ceteris paribus gender pay gap between the two years. To complement the mean regression approach, quantile regression procedures were also employed. Although the median regression provided evidence of a statistically significant temporal increase in the gender pay gap, this finding was not supported at other chosen quantiles of the wage distribution. This result was taken to highlight the possible sensitivity of the OLS procedure.
Russia has undergone tumultuous changes during the transition process. This has been nowhere more evident than within the labour market. The transition has now progressed to such an extent that it is possible to examine whether the issues of a re-capitalisation and restructuring of human capital have been addressed. This paper uses the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey to assess rates of return to human capital investments for the years 1994-1998. It utilises standard earnings functions to assess the returns to education as well as to specific levels of post-compulsory education and training. This article places specific emphasis on firm level training and the role of the firm, for the purpose of this special issue. Results suggest, in the case of Russia, that significant and positive returns to education and training exist comparable in magnitude to those in other transition countries.
Using micro data on women in the Czech Republic, we compare returns to various measures of human capital at three points in time, namely, the end of Communism (1989), in mid-transition (1996), and in late-transition (2002). We find dramatic increases in returns to education from 1989 to 1996 but no change from 1996 to 2002 and no differences in returns to education in state vs. privately-owned firms. We demonstrate that sheepskin or diploma effects exist in both regimes and rise over time; moreover, they are similar across firm ownership types. We find no difference between the returns to education obtained during Communism and the returns to schooling obtained during the transition. Wage–experience profiles do not change over time. The pattern and rates of increase in the returns to education over these three points in time are similar for women and men. In sum, markets pay women and men equally more for their human capital than did the planners; all of the adjustment occurred early in the transition and it was driven by market forces rather than private ownership. Journal of Comparative Economics33 (2) (2005) 278–299.
An alleged achievement of socialism was gender equality in the labour market. Has its collapse shattered this accomplishment? The theoretical literature and attendant empirical evidence are inconclusive. Using data for 2.9 million wage earners in Hungary, we find that the male–female difference in log wages declined from 0.31 to 0.19 between 1986 and 1998 and that this is largely explained by a matching decline in “Oaxaca's discrimination,” suggesting extraordinary improvement of women's relative situation. Further, we find that variation over time in the wage gaps is associated with public and large firms having progressively smaller gaps than their counterparts.
The gradualist approach to economic transition in Belarus would contribute to form the a priori expectation that the rate of return to education is low and the earnings profile by work experience flat, like they supposedly were under central planning. However, the first available estimates of Mincerian earnings equations based on the Belarusian Household Survey on Incomes and Expenditure suggest that the skill payoff was high in 1996, at about 10.1% per year, and stable. The return to 1 year of work experience is also high at 5%. This result maintains also after controlling for sample selection bias, despite a general reduction in the annual rate of return to education by about 20–30%. Though, it is ambiguous whether the high-skill payoff is the consequence of market forces coming into play or of policy decisions, considering the pervasive role of the state in the process of wage determination.
This second edition of Gary S. Becker's The Economics of Discrimination has been expanded to include three further discussions of the problem and an entirely new introduction which considers the contributions made by others in recent years and some of the more important problems remaining. Mr. Becker's work confronts the economic effects of discrimination in the market place because of race, religion, sex, color, social class, personality, or other non-pecuniary considerations. He demonstrates that discrimination in the market place by any group reduces their own real incomes as well as those of the minority. The original edition of The Economics of Discrimination was warmly received by economists, sociologists, and psychologists alike for focusing the discerning eye of economic analysis upon a vital social problemâdiscrimination in the market place. "This is an unusual book; not only is it filled with ingenious theorizing but the implications of the theory are boldly confronted with facts. . . . The intimate relation of the theory and observation has resulted in a book of great vitality on a subject whose interest and importance are obvious."âM.W. Reder, American Economic Review "The author's solution to the problem of measuring the motive behind actual discrimination is something of a tour de force. . . . Sociologists in the field of race relations will wish to read this book."âKarl Schuessler, American Sociological Review
This paper analyzes the gender gap throughout the wage distribution in Spain using data from the European Community Household Panel. Quantile regression and panel data techniques are used to estimate wage regressions. In contrast with the steep increasing pattern found in other countries, the flatter evolution of the Spanish gender gap hides an intriguing composition effect. For highly 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. 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. Publicado
Using data from the March Current Population Survey, the authors document an increase over the past 30 years in wage inequality for males. Between 1963 and 1989, real average weekly wages for the least skilled workers declined by about 5 percent, whereas wages for the most skilled workers rose by about 40 percent. The authors find that the trend toward increased wage inequality is apparent within narrowly defined education and labor market experience groups. Their interpretation is that much of the increase in wage inequality fro males over the last 20 years is due to increased returns to the components of skill other than years of schooling and years of labor market experience. Copyright 1993 by University of Chicago Press.
The gender wage gap in East Germany has narrowed by 10 percentage points in transition, but women have experienced much more severe employment difficulties than men. Using the German Socio-Economic Panel for 199094, I show that on balance women have lost relative to men. Almost half the relative wage gain is due to exits from employment of the low skilled, who are disproportionately women. The female employment decline is not primarily voluntary: more than half the gender gap in the hazard rate from employment reflects a general fall in demand for low-skilled workers. Reduced child care plays no role.
This paper discusses the implication of recent results on the structure of gender wage gaps in transition economies for the literature on gender segregation. Differences in employment rates of low-wage women driven by initial transition policies may be responsible for different wage penalties to predominantly female occupations. New evidence presented here also suggests that the introduction of Western-type anti-discrimination policies has had little immediate effect on the structure of female-male wage differences. (JEL: J3, J7, P3) Copyright (c) 2005 The European Economic Association.
Post-communist labour markets provide a remarkable laboratory for analysing gender differences in labour dynamics and unemployment in particular, since unemployment rates rose from zero to double digit levels in a very short time. While there is much evidence explaining the wage gap between men and women, we provide the first systematic analysis of the gender unemployment gap. Using primary data from the Czech Republic and secondary data from a few other transition economies, we apply a method that allows us to pinpoint which transition probabilities between labour market states are driving the difference. The remarkable finding is that the lion's share of the gender gap in the unemployment rates in the Czech Republic, East Germany, Poland and Russia during early transition is explained by one and the same flow: women's lower probability of finding a job from unemployment. This result holds for the Czech Republic even after controlling for demographic, regional and cyclical factors that may affect gender differences in unemployment. Comparative Economic Studies (2007) 49, 128–155. doi:10.1057/palgrave.ces.8100192
We propose a method to decompose the changes in the wage distribution over a period of time in several factors contributing to those changes. The method is based on the estimation of marginal wage distributions consistent with a conditional distribution estimated by quantile regression as well as with any hypothesized distribution for the covariates. Comparing the marginal distributions implied by different distributions for the covariates, one is then able to perform counterfactual exercises. The proposed methodology enables the identification of the sources of the increased wage inequality observed in most countries. Specifically, it decomposes the changes in the wage distribution over a period of time into several factors contributing to those changes, namely by discriminating between changes in the characteristics of the working population and changes in the returns to these characteristics. We apply this methodology to Portuguese data for the period 1986-1995, and find that the observed increase in educational levels contributed decisively towards greater wage inequality. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Under state socialism, women fared relatively well in the labor market: female-male wage differentials were similar to those in the West, and female labor force participation rates were among the highest in the world. Have these women maintained their relative positions since the introduction of market reforms? The author investigates this question using household surveys from seven formerly socialist countries. The results indicate a consistent increase in female relative wages across Eastern Europe, and a substantial decline in female relative wages in Russia and Ukraine. Women in the latter countries have been penalized by the tremendous widening of the wage distribution in those countries. Increased wage inequality in Eastern Europe has also depressed female relative wages, but these losses have been more than offset by gains in rewards to observed skills and by an apparent decline in discrimination against women. (Author's abstract.)
The paper focuses on the labor "hoarding" problem in Russian. We studied two forms of "hoarding": unpaid leaves and short-time work. Our research is based on the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS) database. The paper exploits individual panel data between 1994 and 1996. We show that unpaid leaves and short-time work do not represent a form of hidden unemployment. Both types of labor "hoarding" reflect the nature of employees' professional competencies. First, unpaid leaves concern primarily the employees with firm-specific knowledge, while short-time work affects strongly unskilled workers. Second, external mobility is mostly related to young people and unskilled blue-collar workers while employees with specific competencies do not change jobs so much. The paper insists on significant internal adjustments which are taking place through unpaid leaves and short-time work. This explains why there has been no massive unemployment in Russia until now. In conclusion, Russian labor market is characterized rather by internal flexibility than by labor "hoarding".
The paper focuses on the labor "hoarding" problem in Russia. We studied two forms of "hoarding": unpaid leaves and short-time work. Our research based on the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS) database. The paper exploits individual panel data between 1994 and 1996.
In the Former Soviet Union, the early 1990s were characterized by large falls in GDP and small changes to already low unemployment. The slow adjustment to unemployment was a result of employers using various means to maintain employment levels, including; extended periods of unpaid leave, reduced hours of work and non-payment of wages. A theoretical model presented here explains why it was rational for firms to adjust labour in this way. The nature of inherited features of the Soviet labour market and lack of institutions necessary for a competitive market economy meant it was in the firm's interest initially to maintain employment levels. Quantitative analysis using Kyrgyz data for 1993 and 1996 provides evidence of changing economic behaviour in agents over this period.
This paper explores the link between rising wage dispersion in Russia over the transitional period and the gender pay gap. The work of Blau and Kahn (1996) emphasized a role for ‘wage structure’ in the determination of the gender pay gap, although some interpretational issues concerning their methodology have been raised recently by Suen (1997). The unadjusted gender pay gap between 1992 and 1996 exhibited some degree of stability, but the analysis presented identified increased wage dispersion as a modest agent for the widening of the gap in Russia. Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) estimates for an equation pooling observations from both gender groups, registered no statistical difference in the mean ceteris paribus gender pay gap between the two years. To complement the mean regression approach, quantile regression procedures were also employed. Although the median regression provided evidence of a statistically significant temporal increase in the gender pay gap, this finding was not supported at other chosen quantiles of the wage distribution. This result was taken to highlight the possible sensitivity of the OLS procedure.
JEL classification: J16, J31, P23.
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The Authors Economics of Transition Ó 2011 The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development
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Ó 2011 The Authors
Economics of Transition Ó 2011 The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development