Prague Economic Papers 2012, 21(3):328-346 | DOI: 10.18267/j.pep.427

Gender Wage Gap in the Czech Republic and Central European Countries

Martina Mysíková
Institute of Economic Studies, Charles University in Prague, and Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences, Prague (martina.mysikova@centrum.cz).

This paper aims to quantify the basic structure of gender wage gaps in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia, using the EU-SILC 2008 dataset. The structure of the gender wage gap is analyzed based on the Heckman selection model and Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition. The findings are to a great extent similar for the Czech and Slovak Republics. The observed gender wage gap is relatively high in these two countries, compared to Hungary and Poland. A relatively small but positive part of the observed gender wage gap can be explained by gender differences in characteristics in the Czech and Slovak Republics, with a high contribution of job characteristics. An opposite result proved in Hungary and Poland, where working women have on average even better characteristics than working men, mainly in terms of individual characteristics.

Keywords: endowment effect, gender wage gap, Heckman model, labor market participation, Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition, remuneration effect, sample-selection effect
JEL classification: J16, J24, J31

Published: January 1, 2012  Show citation

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Mysíková, M. (2012). Gender Wage Gap in the Czech Republic and Central European Countries. Prague Economic Papers, 21(3), 328-346. doi: 10.18267/j.pep.427
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