Haas, Sherri

Seeborg, Faculty Advisor, Michael

Digital Commons @ Illinois Wesleyan University

Illinois Wesleyan UniversityDigital Commons @ IWUJohn Wesley Powell Student ResearchConference 2006, 17th Annual JWP ConferenceApr 8th, 11:00 AM - 12:00 PMEconomic Development and the Gender WageGapSherri HaasIllinois Wesleyan UniversityMichael Seeborg, Faculty AdvisorIllinois Wesleyan UniversityFollow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/jwprcThis Event is brought to you for free and open access by The Ames Library, the Andrew W. Mellon Center for Curricular and FacultyDevelopment, the Office of the Provost and the Office of the President. It has been accepted for inclusion in Digital Commons @ IWU bythe faculty at Illinois Wesleyan University. For more information, please contact digitalcommons@iwu.edu.©Copyright is owned by the author of this document.Sherri Haas and Michael Seeborg, Faculty Advisor, "Economic Development and the Gender Wage Gap" (April 8, 2006).John Wesley Powell Student Research Conference. Paper 3.http://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/jwprc/2006/oralpres10/3THE JOHN WESLEY POWELL STUDENT RESEARCH CONFERENCE - APRIL 2006 Oral Presentation 010.3 ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND THE GENDER WAGE GAP Sherri Haas and Michael Seeborg* Economics Department, Illinois Wesleyan University Differences in earnings between men and women vary widely across countries. While a small number of countries have a gender wage ratio close to equality, others exhibit inequality to the extent where men earn over three times the amount women earn. Simon Kuznets postulated that an inverted-U relationship exists between the level of economic development of a country and the degree of income inequality within it. This study predicts that a similar relationship holds between economic development of a country and the amount of gender income inequality within it. It also predicts that disparity in educational achievement between the genders will be positively related to the wage ratio, as will be the amount of general income inequality. Regression analysis is used to test the hypotheses. The study examines data on 121 countries obtained primarily from the United Nations Human Development Report. The results of the study support the hypotheses. An inverted-U relationship exists between economic development and the wage ratio. This study finds that as economic development increases the size of the gender wage gap increases, but at high levels of development the difference in earnings decreases. 

Economic Development and the Gender Wage Gap

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Economic Development and the Gender Wage Gap

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