Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/200374 
Year of Publication: 
2018
Series/Report no.: 
ISER Working Paper Series No. 2018-10
Publisher: 
University of Essex, Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER), Colchester
Abstract: 
We analyse impacts of the rising labor force participation of women on the gender wage gap. We formulate and structurally estimate an equilibrium model of the labor market in which the elasticity of substitution between male and female labor is allowed to vary depending on the task content of occupations. We find that the elasticity of substitution is higher in high-paying occupations that are intensive in abstract and analytical tasks than in low-paying manual and routine occupations. Consistent with this we find a narrowing of the gender wage gap towards the upper end of the wage distribution and an increase in the gender wage gap at the low end. Demand side trends favoured women and this attenuated the supply-driven downward pressure on women's wages in low-paying occupations, and fully counteracted it in high-paying occupations. The paper contributes new evidence on the distribution of the gender wage gaps, and contributes to a wider literature on technological change, occupational sorting, wage inequality and polarization.
Subjects: 
Female labour force participation
Gender wage gap
Technological change
Supply-Demand framework
Task-based approach
Wage distribution
JEL: 
J16
J21
J24
J31
O33
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.