Seid Yimer, Sapienza Universita Roma: "Gender wage gap in Ghana manufacturing firms: Matched employer-employee data"
Abstract
This paper investigates the sources of gender wage gap in Ghana manufacturing firms using demand and supply side determinants of individual wage and data spanning 1992-2003. The study provides statistical evidence against the use of gender dummy and Oaxaca and Blinder approaches in wage decomposition. Instead, the re-centered influence function quantile decomposition method has been used and we find that gender pay gaps are indeed heterogeneous. Men’s wages are markedly higher than women’s wages across the entire wage distributions. But, gender wage gap declines across distributions and this pattern is often described as sticky floor. The strong and pervasive effects at the bottom quantiles suggest that poor women are more disadvantageous. Pure productivity difference, which accounts for more than 60% of the gap at all quantiles, is the main factor behind gender disparity in pay. Women are segregated in low paying firms, which explains at least 20% of the pay gap at all quantiles. Clustering and stratification problems associated with data have been addressed in the decomposition , making the findings more dependable.