Abstract :
[en] Studying twelve countries over 30 years, we examine whether women’s educational expansion has translated into a narrowing of the gender gap in earnings when including persons with zero earnings. As educational attainment is cohort-dependent, an Age-Period-Cohort analysis is most appropriate in our view. Using the micro data from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) Database, we show that while, in terms of attainment of tertiary education, women have caught up and often even outperform men, substantial gender differences in our earnings measure persist in all countries. Using the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition method in an innovative age-period-cohort approach, we demonstrate that the role of education in explaining gender earnings differences has been limited and even decreased over cohorts. We also conclude that, when including persons not receiving earnings, earnings differences at levels far from gender equality will likely persist in the future, even if the “rise of women” in terms of education continues—as the share of women in higher education increases and the returns to education in particular for women declines.
Funding text :
This work was supported by the National Research Fund Luxembourg (FNR) in the frame of the project FNR/P11/05 Prosocial. We would like to thank Martin Schröder for his contribution to an earlier version of this paper. Furthermore, we thank Herbert Smith for his insightful feedback as well as Leslie McCall, Chicago PAA congress 2017 participants, and also ASA Montreal 2017 congress for their useful suggestions on earlier versions of the paper. Last but not least, we are grateful to the staff of the LIS Cross-National Data Center, especially Thierry Kruten and Jörg Neugschwender, for their support with the data management.
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