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Regional Differences in the Gender Wage Gap in Spain

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Abstract

This study examines regional differences in the gender wage gap in Spain using matched employer–employee microdata, two different econometric decomposition methods and panel data techniques. Our findings suggest that Spain shows a significant regional heterogeneity in the size of the raw gap, roughly comparable to cross-country differences observed in the European context. The results from the decomposition analysis show that although the bulk of the gender wage gap in Spanish regions is due to differences in the endowments of productive characteristics between males and females there is still a substantial part of the gap that remains unexplained. The analysis of the causes behind the variation of both, the raw and the unexplained gender wage gap by region highlights that several economic, institutional and demographic elements identified in previous studies analysing international differences in the gender wage gap are also relevant to explain regional differences in the gender wage gap in Spain.

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Notes

  1. The advantages of using matched employer–employee microdata to study the gender wage gap and its main explanatory factors have been emphasized by Abowd and Kramarz (1999) and Hamermesh (2008), inter alia.

  2. Also related to women employment prospects, using a harmonized matched employer-employee data for European countries Gannon et al. (2007) and Simón (2012) put particular emphasis on gender differences in the distribution of workers between and within industries—and in particular on female segregation into low-paying workplaces—concluding that these are major factors in the explanation of the gender wage gap within and between countries.

  3. In the same vein Rendall (2013) and Kaya (2014) focus on the skills requirements of jobs typically held by men and women (brawn vs. brain skills) to analyse the gender wage gap from an international perspective.

  4. Unfortunately, EES data correspond to employees and do not include information about the whole labour force so it does not permit to control for potential selection bias into employment with standard econometric techniques.

  5. The average number of observations per workplace in the overall sample is between 12 and 15, according to the year, and the number of females is usually in the range of 30–40 % of the overall sample of employees in each workplace.

  6. October’s wage is taken as the reference since being employed in that month is the requisite that defines the survey population. The total number of hours worked in that month is calculated as the worker’s normal working week in October multiplied by 4.35, plus the number of overtime hours worked.

  7. For a thorough analysis of the determinants of the evolution over time of the gender wage gap in Spain in the period under review, see Murillo and Simón (2014).

  8. Note that, by the nature of the decomposition here applied, the value of this last component provides the average intra-workplace wage differential between males and females with the same observed characteristics working in the same workplace. The positive value observed for this component therefore suggests that in general Spanish firms tend to pay lower wages to females than to males with similar observed characteristics, which is consistent with the existence of wide-ranging direct discrimination against females in the Spanish labour market.

  9. This unexpected sign could be due to the fact that probably the consideration of firm-fixed effects toghether with activity sector dummies in the estimation already captures differences in the degree of competition in local markets.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under Grants ECO2014-53702-P; CSO2014-55780-C3-2-P and ECO2013-41022-R.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universidad de Extremadura, Av. Elvas, s/n, 06006, Badajoz, Spain

    Ines P. Murillo Huertas

  2. AQR-IREA, Universitat de Barcelona, Av. Diagonal 690, 08034, Barcelona, Spain

    Raul Ramos

  3. Universidad de Alicante-IEI-IEB, Carretera San Vicente del Raspeig, s/n, 03690, San Vicente del Raspeig, Spain

    Hipolito Simon

Authors
  1. Ines P. Murillo Huertas
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  2. Raul Ramos
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  3. Hipolito Simon
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Correspondence to Hipolito Simon.

Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 6, 7, 8, 9.

Table 6 Descriptive statistics
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Table 7 Definition of the institutional, economic and demographic explanatory variables of the regional gender wage gaps
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Table 8 Wage differentials between males and females in the European Union. Gender pay gap in unadjusted form. Structure of Earnings Survey methodology.
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Table 9 Wage differentials between males and females in Spanish regions. Gender pay gap in unadjusted form. Structure of Earnings Survey methodology.
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Murillo Huertas, I.P., Ramos, R. & Simon, H. Regional Differences in the Gender Wage Gap in Spain. Soc Indic Res 134, 981–1008 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-016-1461-8

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