Working Paper

Gender Gap

Abstract: We employ the Ben-Porath (1967) human capital model to study the evolution of the gender wage gap over the long run. We consider the effect of changing lifecycle profiles of female market hours. We find that the implied response in unobserved investment in human capital accumulation accounts for most of the long run gender wage gap dynamics. This finding is consistent with the labor economists’ view that changing selection on unobservables played a critical role in the gender wage gap dynamics. Our contribution is to make explicit and quantify the link between market hours and (unobserved) investment in human capital.

Keywords: gender wage gap; selection bias; female labor force participation; on-the-job investment; human capital;

JEL Classification: J16; J24; J31;

https://doi.org/10.20955/wp.2022.025

Bibliographic Information

Provider: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

Part of Series: Working Papers

Publication Date: 2022-04-15

Number: 2022-025

Related Works

• Working Paper Revision: The Evolution of Lifetime Hours and the Gender Wage Gap