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Gender and Racial Pay Gaps

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British Teenagers in BHPS. 25.0. 15.6. I feel left out of things when I am ... Get matched pairs to apply for jobs, one white, one black and see what happens ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Gender and Racial Pay Gaps


1
Gender and Racial Pay Gaps
2
Introduction
  • Normally put together (as here) e.g.
    Altonji-Blank chapter in HOLE
  • There are similarities but there are also
    differences
  • Women have babies
  • Ethnic minorities often geographically
    concentrated

3
The Gender Pay Gap
  • Men, on average, earn more than women, pretty
    much everywhere
  • But there is variation
  • across countries,
  • over time
  • within countries at a point in time (e.g.
    differences in earnings profiles we saw earlier)

4
Variation in the Gender Pay Gap Across Countries
(Blau-Kahn, JEP 2000)
5
Questions and Puzzles?
  • Is position of women in southern Europe really
    much better than in Northern Europe, the US?
  • Problem of sample selection (Petrongolo and
    Olivetti, CEP DP711) proportion of women
    working in southern Europe much lower

6
Olivetti-Petrongolo CEP DP711
7
Variation in Gender Pay Gap Over Time - UK
8
Blau-Kahn, JEP 2000
9
Variation in Gender Pay Gap Over Time - US
10
Most other countries
  • Similar trend but timing different
  • But some countries have marked change around time
    of Equal Pay Act (e.g. UK), some do not (e.g. US)

11
Accounting for the Gender Pay Gap the Oaxaca
decomposition
  • Think of estimating separate earnings functions
    for men and women
  • These must go through the means so

12
  • Taking differences
  • This can be written as
  • i.e. gender pay gap is decomposed into
  • Part due to differences in characteristics
  • Part due to differences in coefficients
  • Second part used to be called discrimination
    but perhaps unwise to do so

13
  • But decomposition is not unique e.g. could write
  • Will generally give different answers only same
    answer if only difference in intercept
  • No reason to prefer one over the other and could
    evaluate at other characteristics generally
    report them all and hope tell a similar story

14
A Graphical Representation
15
Insights from Oaxaca decomposition US 1979
(Altonji Blank, HOLE)
16
Insights from Oaxaca decomposition US 1995
(Altonji Blank, HOLE)
17
What does UK look like?
At male chars At male chars At female chars At female chars
raw differential diffs in chars diffs in returns diffs in chars diffs in returns
No controls -0.285 0 -0.285 0 -0.285
Year Region -0.285 -0.001 -0.284 0.001 -0.286
Education -0.285 -0.045 -0.24 -0.029 -0.256
Potential Experience -0.285 -0.028 -0.257 -0.031 -0.254
Race -0.285 -0.027 -0.258 -0.031 -0.254
MaritalKids -0.285 -0.033 -0.252 -0.032 -0.253
Job Tenure -0.285 -0.058 -0.227 -0.055 -0.23
IndustryEmployer Size -0.285 -0.089 -0.196 -0.101 -0.184
Occupation (2-digit) -0.285 -0.145 -0.14 -0.098 -0.187
18
Things to Note
  • Hard to find regressors that can explain most of
    gender pay gap
  • Problem bigger now than in the past as men and
    women more similar now
  • Perhaps do not have the right variable focus
    especially on actual experience as opposed to
    potential

19
Altonji-Blank Table 6
20
Differences in actual experience not huge e.g. UK
BCS 70
21
Blau-Kahn alternative measure of gender pay gap
position in male wage distribution
22
What insights from this?
  • Position of women in US looks better high level
    of wage inequality tends to widen gender pay gap
  • Gender pay gap influenced by factors which do not
    seem to have gender-specific angle Blau-Kahn
    JOLE 2003 show that collective bargaining and
    minimum wage important

23
Theories of the Gender Pay Gap
  • Human Capital Theories
  • Women have lower actual experience
  • Invest less in human capital
  • Discrimination
  • Prejudice
  • Statistical discrimination
  • Search Theories
  • Psychological Theories

24
Human Capital Theories
  • Among past generations women had less education
    than men now they have slightly more
  • But women still spend less time in paid work than
    men but are gaps big enough?
  • Can explain some of the gap but not all of it
    see earlier picture

25
Theories of DiscriminationBeckers Theory of
Prejudice
  • Becker The Economics of Discrimination proposed a
    theory of discrimination that was based on the
    prejudice of agents in the labour market,
    employers, workers and customers. It is
  • sometimes called a tastes theory.
  • Basic idea is that some people are prejudiced so
    will be prepared to pay a price to avoid certain
    groups
  • This then affects the demand for labour of those
    groups.

26
A Simple Model of Employer Discrimination
  • Suppose that some employers are prejudiced
    against black people
  • Implies that if black and white wages were the
    same, they would always prefer to employ white
    workers.
  • But they do care about profits so that, if the
    black wage is sufficiently below the white, the
    extra money they can save by employing black
    workers is sufficient to overcome their prejudice.

27
  • Suppose the wage for white workers is Ww and
    that for black workers is Wb.
  • Firm f will choose to employ black workers if the
    relative wage is given by
  • where df is the firms discrimination
    coefficient. If df0 the employer is not
    prejudiced and employs whichever group of workers
    is cheapest
  • a larger value of df implies the employer is more
    prejudiced

28
Demands for Black and White Workers
  • If the wage paid by firm f is W, denote its
    demand for labour by
  • If it employs white workers it will employ
  • if it employs black workers it will employ

29
  • order the F firms in the order of their
    discrimination coefficient so that there will be
    a cut-off f, below which all firms employ black
    workers and above which they employ white
    workers.
  • The cut-off must satisfy
  • Hence, the overall demand for black workers is
    going to be

30
  • And aggragate demand for white workers
  • What does equillibrium look like?
  • If no prejudice than black and white wages must
    be equal otherwise all firms employ all black or
    all white workers
  • But where there is prejudice white wages and
    black wages will diverge prejudice has
    consequences for demand for labour and hence
    relative wages

31
Assessment
  • Prejudiced firms make lower profits as will only
    employ more expensive white workers
  • Becker predicted competition would drive out
    discrimination
  • Not clear this is a good prediction but
    argument does not work for consumer discrimination

32
Statistical Discrimination
  • basic idea is that in a world of imperfect
    information, employers will base decisions on
    observable characteristics (like race and gender)
    that do not directly affect productivity because
    they are correlated with unobserved
    characteristics that do affect productivity.
  • Many variants of this theory will present one

33
Simple model of statistical discrimination
  • true productivity of a worker, p, is not observed
    by employers but do know true distribution in
    population (mean is µ)
  • employers do observe an imperfect signal of
    productivity (e.g. education), s,
  • Under certain assumptions (that I dont want to
    go into here), the expected productivity of
    someone with signal s is given by

34
  • T a measure of how informative is the signal
    about the quality of the worker concerned.
  • In a competitive labour market workers will
    receive a wage equal to their expected
    productivity so wE(p).
  • Assume T is lower for whites than blacks (why?)
    so that

35
  • black and white workers with the same level of
    education will now get different wages so there
    is some discrimination.
  • But the average level of wages across will simply
    reflect the average level of productivity so
    there can only be discrimination overall if
    µw?µb.
  • Now consider choice of education
  • Leading to first-order condition

36
  • If ? lower for blacks than whites then lower
    incentives for blacks to get educated
  • leads to a lower average level of productivity
    for blacks and lower average wages.
  • In equilibrium blacks get paid less than whites
    because they have lower productivity but this is
    the outcome of a rational decision-making process
    in which they have lower returns to skills
    because employers find it harder to evaluate
    their skills.
  • key point in models of statistical discrimination
    is that your fate is determined not just by what
    you do but by what people like you do.
  • This can lead to self-fulfilling expectations
    that are discriminatory in nature.

37
Vicious Cycle Theories of Discrimination
  • Employers think women are more likely than men to
    take time out of paid work so do not invest in
    them, promote them as much
  • Within couples becomes rational for the woman to
    take time out because opportunity cost for man is
    larger
  • Relies on a form of statistical discrimination
    get judged by your gender not your personal
    characteristics

38
Search Theories
  • Search theories suggest
  • faster earnings growth if job offers arrive more
    regularly
  • Slower earnings growth if leave jobs more
    regularly
  • Women report more constraints on job search,
    commute shorter distances etc

39
For example
40
Search Theories Job Mobility Rates for better job
41
Job Mobility Rates not for better job
42
Psychological Theories
  • A more recent development
  • By the time they enter labour market men and
    women are different in personalities
  • Why is suggest of furious nature vs. nurture
    debate
  • Some have suggested this can help to explain
    gender pay gap

43
Example of psychological differences
44
Evidence for this view
  • Babcock-Laschever Women Dont Ask women dont
    ask for what they want because of lower
    self-esteem, lower locus of control, more concern
    about what others think
  • Gneezy et al lab work women try to avoid
    competition and dont do so well when faced with
    it

45
Gneezy, Niederle, and Rustichini, QJE 2003
46
British Teenagers in BHPS
Percentages agreeing with the statement Men Women
I feel I have a number of good qualities 93.0 91.0
I feel that I do not have much to be proud of 13.9 17.5
I certainly feel useless at times 29.1 44.8
I am able to do things as well as most other people 91.0 90.5
I am a likeable person 93.0 93.6
I can usually solve my own problems 90.2 86.0
All in all, I am inclined to feel I am a failure 8.9 12.1
At times I feel I am no good at all 22.6 35.3
I feel left out of things when I am with friends 15.6 25.0
47
How to map this into wages?
  • Tried this in Manning-Swaffield
  • Not much success at most a few percentage
    points
  • Still ended up with a large gap after 10 years in
    the labour market

48
Racial Pay Gaps
  • Harder to compare across countries as ethnic mix
    varies so much
  • Tend to be smaller than gender pay gaps
  • Often show a lot of variation across ethnic
    groups e.g. in UK Pakistanis/Bangladeshis do
    badly, Indians much better
  • Can often relate that to social background prior
    to immigration

49
Black-White Earnings Gap In US
50
Interpretation
  • Blacks made significant gains in 1960s and 1970s
    as a result of civil rights movement
  • But stagnation after 1980

51
Explaining the Black-White Wage Gap
  • Oaxaca decomposition suggests can explain more of
    black-white pay gap than gender pay gap
  • Sizeable differences in education
  • Neal-Johnson claim that can explain nearly
    everything if include test score variable
  • Suggests that any discrimination is prior to
    labour market entry

52
Neal-Johnson, JPE, 1996 evidence
53
Audit studies
  • However, audit studies do suggest discrimination
    in labour market
  • Get matched pairs to apply for jobs, one white,
    one black and see what happens
  • Expensive to do, small samples, questions about
    experimental bias
  • Betrand-Mullainathan AER 2004 perhaps more
    persuasive

54
Betrand-Mullainathan AER 2004
  • Research design
  • Send out CVs
  • Measure call-back rates
  • Convey race through name randomly assigned
  • Find call-back rates lower for black-sounding
    names, bigger difference for high-quality CVs
  • Criticism does name convey something other than
    race Fryer-Levitt QJE

55
Bertand-Mullainathan Results
56
Discrimination Estimates from Production
FunctionsHellerstein, Neumark, Troske, JOLE 1999
57
Conclusion
  • Being able to find the magic X variable that
    can explain gender pay gap remains elusive
  • On black-white wage gap, main question is around
    whether labour market differences totally reflect
    pre-market differences
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