Do Cognitive and Noncognitive Skills Explain the Gender Wage Gap in Middle-Income Countries? : An Analysis Using STEP Data
Gender-based wage discrimination is a highly researched area of labor economics. However, most studies on this topic have focused on schooling and paid limited attention to the mechanisms through which cognitive and noncognitive skills influence wa...
| Main Authors: | , , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2016
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/479671478193527141/Do-cognitive-and-noncognitive-skills-explain-the-gender-wage-gap-in-middle-income-countries-an-analysis-using-STEP-data http://hdl.handle.net/10986/25679 |
| Summary: | Gender-based wage discrimination is a
highly researched area of labor economics. However, most
studies on this topic have focused on schooling and paid
limited attention to the mechanisms through which cognitive
and noncognitive skills influence wages. This paper uses
data from adults in seven low- and middle-income countries
that participated in the STEP Skills Measurement Survey to
conduct a comparative analysis of gender wage gaps. The
paper uses schooling and skills measures, including reading
proficiency and complexity of on-the-job computer tasks to
proxy cognitive skills, and personality and behavioral
measures to proxy for noncognitive skills in wage
decompositions. The analysis finds that years of school
explain most of the gender wage gap. The findings also
suggest that cognitive and noncognitive skills affect men’s
and women’s earnings in different ways, and that the effects
of these skills vary across the wage distribution and
between countries. |
|---|