Wage Discrimination Measurement: In Defense of a Simple but Informative Statistical Tool

Econpubblica Working Paper No. 128

33 Pages Posted: 5 Feb 2009

See all articles by Michel Le Breton

Michel Le Breton

University of Toulouse I - GREMAQ-IDEI

Alessandra Michelangeli

Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca - Department of Economics, Management and Statistics (DEMS); Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca - Center for European Studies (CefES); Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca - Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Economics, Psychology & Social Sciences (CISEPS)

Eugenio Peluso

University of Verona - Department of Economics

Date Written: June 5, 2008

Abstract

We examine several functional and numerical measures of wage discrimination in the spirit of the Lorenz curve. The First Order discrimination curve is based on the comparison of the wage CDF of two subpopulations. Three different Second Order discrimination curves are derived to refine the first one by taking into account inequality and/or efficiency in the wage distribution across the two groups. We explore the relationship between these curves and some popular discrimination indices. We use standard economic size distributions to recover closed forms of discrimination curves. The main results are illustrated on PSID data, year 2005.

Keywords: Discrimination measurement, Gastwirth index, Statistical Size Distributions

JEL Classification: J71, D31, D63, C16

Suggested Citation

Le Breton, Michel and Michelangeli, Alessandra and Peluso, Eugenio, Wage Discrimination Measurement: In Defense of a Simple but Informative Statistical Tool (June 5, 2008). Econpubblica Working Paper No. 128, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1337986 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1337986

Michel Le Breton (Contact Author)

University of Toulouse I - GREMAQ-IDEI ( email )

Manufacture des Tabacs
21 Allees de Brienne
Toulouse, 31000
France

Alessandra Michelangeli

Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca - Department of Economics, Management and Statistics (DEMS) ( email )

Piazza dell'Ateneo Nuovo, 1
Milan, 20126
Italy

Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca - Center for European Studies (CefES)

U6 Building
Viale Piero e Alberto Pirelli, 22
Milano, 20126
Italy

Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca - Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Economics, Psychology & Social Sciences (CISEPS) ( email )

Piazza dell'Ateneo Nuovo, 1
Milano, 20126
Italy

Eugenio Peluso

University of Verona - Department of Economics ( email )

Via dell'Artigliere, 8
37129 Verona
Italy

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