Ceiling and Floors: Gender Wage Gaps by Education in Spain

35 Pages Posted: 9 Feb 2005

See all articles by Sara de la Rica

Sara de la Rica

Universidad del Pais Vasco; IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Juan Jose Dolado

Charles III University of Madrid - Department of Economics; Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR); Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA); CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute)

Vanesa Llorens

Marsh & McLennan Companies - Madrid Office

Date Written: January 2005

Abstract

This paper analyses the gender wage gaps by education throughout the wage distribution in Spain using individual data from the ECHP (1999). Quantile regressions are used to estimate the wage returns to the different characteristics at the more relevant percentiles and a suitable version of the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition is then implemented to estimate the component of the gender gap not explained by different characteristics. Our main findings are two-fold. First, in contrast with the steep pattern found for other countries, the flatter evolution of the gap in Spain hides a composition effect when the sample is split by education. On the one hand, for the group with college/tertiary education, we find a higher unexplained gap at the top than at the bottom of the distribution, in accordance with the conventional glass ceiling hypothesis. On the other, for the group with lower education, the gap is much higher at the bottom than at the top of the distribution. We label this novel pattern as glass floors and argue that it is due to statistical discrimination exerted by employers in view of the low participation rate of women in this group. Such a hypothesis is confirmed when using the panel structure of the ECHP.

Keywords: gender gap, glass ceilings, glass floors, quantile regressions

JEL Classification: J16, J71

Suggested Citation

de la Rica, Sara and Dolado, Juan Jose and Llorens, Vanesa, Ceiling and Floors: Gender Wage Gaps by Education in Spain (January 2005). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=664525 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.664525

Sara De la Rica (Contact Author)

Universidad del Pais Vasco ( email )

Barrio Sarriena s/n
Leioa, Bizkaia 48940
Spain

IZA Institute of Labor Economics

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

Juan Jose Dolado

Charles III University of Madrid - Department of Economics ( email )

Calle Madrid 126
Getafe, 28903
Spain
+34 91 624 9300 (Phone)
+34 91 624 9313 (Fax)

HOME PAGE: http://www.eco.uc3m.es/english/staff/

Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

London
United Kingdom

Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute)

Poschinger Str. 5
Munich, DE-81679
Germany

Vanesa Llorens

Marsh & McLennan Companies - Madrid Office ( email )

Paseo de la Castellana, 13
28046 Madrid
Spain
+34 91 521 0020 (Phone)
+34 91 521 7876 (Fax)

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