Swimming Upstream, Floating Downstream: Trends in the U.S. and Danish Gender Wage Gaps

Nabanita Datta Gubta (), Ronald Oaxaca and Nina Smith
Additional contact information
Nabanita Datta Gubta: Centre for Labour Market and Social Research, Aarhus School of Business, Postal: The Aarhus School of Business, Prismet, Silkeborgvej 2, DK 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Nabanita Datta Gupta

No 01-6, CLS Working Papers from University of Aarhus, Aarhus School of Business, Centre for Labour Market and Social Research

Abstract: While the gender wage gap has reduced considerably in the U.S. since the late 1970s, in Denmark it has virtually stagnated over the same period. Using the U.S. CPS and the Danish Longitudinal Sample data, we compare the development in the gender wage gaps in these two countries between 1983-1995 in both time-series and microeconometric analyses. We present a new decomposition methodology that is anchored on the overall wage distribution and show that the difference in the rates of convergence of the wage gaps in the two countries in this period can be explained by inter-country differences in the wage effects of observed skill prices and gender differences in selectivity. In Denmark, these effects have wiped out any gains arising from women's skill- improvement. In the U.S., these effects have not offset women's wage gains due to skill-improvement. Decompositions at different deciles of the distribution show that women at the highest decile in Denmark have the biggest increase in the wage gap in this period, primarily due to unobservables. In the U.S., the decline in the wage gap is largest at the top and at the middle of the distribution.

Keywords: Gender wage gaps; Decomposition method (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J70 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 40 pages
Date: 2002-06-27
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ltv
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.cls.dk/workingpapers/docfiles/85.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 500 Can't connect to www.cls.dk:80 (This is usually a temporary error during hostname resolution and means that the local server did not receive a response from an authoritative server. )

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:aarcls:2001_006

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CLS Working Papers from University of Aarhus, Aarhus School of Business, Centre for Labour Market and Social Research The Aarhus School of Business, Prismet, Silkeborgvej 2, DK 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Helle Vinbaek Stenholt ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).