Universidad Pompeu Fabra. Departamento de Economía y Empresa
Abstract
This paper re-examines gender wage differences, taking into account not only worker
characteristics but also job characteristics. Consideration of a wide set of “job quality”
indicators can explain a fraction of the wage gap that would otherwise be attributed to pure
wage discrimination. In any case, the fraction of the wage gap that remains associated to
differential rewards for identical factors across sexes is still substantial. Our results suggest
that in order to avoid overestimation of the fraction of the wage gap attributable to
discrimination, it is necessary to control for job characteristics.We gratefully acknowledge financial support from DGES project PB98-1058-C03-03 and
from the Instituto de la Mujer, Project VS/2001/0497