Decomposing and Analyzing the Inverse Relationship between Wages and Educational Attainment by Gender in Mexico
Open Access
Author:
Pathak, Esha
Area of Honors:
Economics
Degree:
Bachelor of Science
Document Type:
Thesis
Thesis Supervisors:
Bee Yan Roberts, Thesis Supervisor James R. Tybout, Thesis Honors Advisor
Keywords:
Mexico Gender Gap Education Wages Discrimination Blinder Oaxaca Decomposition
Abstract:
The wage gap between men and women has presented itself at the forefront of female discrimination. Educational attainment is a significant variable impacting one’s wages. In developing countries, the lack of education for women is expected to result in lower female wages. However, Mexico presents itself as an interesting case as it presents no gap for educational attainment between men and women, yet it still experiences a growing gender wage gap. Given this, this thesis decomposes the gender wage gap by occupational segregation in order to estimate whether the wage gap is driven by individual worker differences (gender) or confounding sector factors (precarious working conditions.) This is achieved by running regression models that establish significant correlations between education and wages in Mexico. The Blinder Oaxaca Decomposition method is used to decompose the wage gap and estimate known and unknown differences.
