Occupational segregation, selection effects and gender wage differences: evidence from urban Colombia
| Autor | Jairo Guillermo Isaza Castro |
| Cargo | ssociated professor, Universidad de La Salle |
| Páginas | 73-116 |
73
Jairo Guillermo Isaza Castro*
ISSN 0120-3053
Volumen 33 - Nº. 57
Enero - Junio de 2014
Págs. 73-116
Artículo de Investigación
__________
* Associated professor, Universidad de La Salle. Economist, Universidad Católica de Colom bia; MAin Development
Studies, Internation al Institute of Social Studies, The Neth erlands; PhD in Econom ics, Universi ty of Sussex,
United Kingdom. My sincere acknowledgements to Prof. Barry Reilly for his valuable suggestions on an earl ier
draft of this paper. The author is also thankful for the comments r eceived from an anonymous referee and from
the partic ipants at th e Sussex DPhil Conference o rganised b y the Departmen t of Economi cs, Univers ity of
Sussex (Brighton, UK) on November 2009 and the Third Al ban Conference celebrated in Porto (Portugal) on June
2009. Usual disclaimers apply. Contact: jgisaza@gmail.com and jis aza@lasalle.edu.co
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This paper assesses the effects of occupationalsegregation on the gender wagegap in
urban Colombia between1986 and 2000. The empirical methodologyinvolves a two-
stepprocedure wherebythe occupationaldistributions of workersby genderare modelled
using a multinomial logit model in the first stage. In the secondstage, the multinomial
logit estimates are used notonly to derive a counterfactualoccupational distributionof
women in the absence of workplace discrimination but also to correct for selectivity
biasin the wageequationsfor each occupationalcategoryusingthe procedure suggested
by Lee (1983). Besides the explained and unexplained components in conventional
decompositions of the gender wage gap, this methodology differentiates between the
justifiedand unjustified effectso f the gender allocationof workers across occupational
categories. The results for urban Colombia indicate that controlling for selectivitybias
at the occupational category level is found to be relevant in all years reviewed in this
study. They also suggest that a changing composition of the female labour supply in
terms of un observables (i.e., ability and motivation) is playinga role in the dramatic
reduction of the observed wagegap.
: occupational segregation, gender wage gap, multinomial logit, selection
bias,Co lombia.
: J16, J71, C24
Este documento analiza los efectos de la segregación ocupacional en la brecha salarial
por géneroen Colombia urbanaentre 1986 y 2000.La metodología empíricainvolucra
un procedimiento en d os etapas por el cua l las distribuciones ocupacion ales de
trabajadorespor género son modeladas a partir de un modelo logit multinomial enuna
primera etapa. En una segunda etapa, los estimativosdel modelo logit multinomial se
usan nosolo para derivar una distribuciónocupacional contrafactual de las mujeresen
ausenciade discriminación en el lugarde trabajo, sino también para corregir por sesgo
de selección en las ecuaciones de ingresos laborales por género para cada categoría
ocupacional, a través del procedimiento sugerido por Lee (1983). Además de los
componentesexplicadosy no explicadosen descomposicionessalarialesconvencionales,
esta metodol ogía diferencia entre lo s efectos justifica dos y no ju stificados de la
distribución de trabajadores por género a lo largo de categorías ocupacionales. Los
resultados para Colombia urbana indican que controlar por sesgo de selección en el
nivelde categoría ocupacionales relevante en todoslos años revisados en el esteestudio.
Ellostambiénsugierenque loscambios en la composiciónde la oferta de trabajofemenina
en términos de variables no observables (por ejemplo, motivación y habilidad) están
jugando un rolfundamentalen la reducciónde la brechade ingresos porgéneroregistrada
para este período.
: seg rega ció n oc upa cio na l, b re cha d e ing re sos p or gén ero,
logitmultinomial,sesgo de selección, Colombia.
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INTRO DUCTI ON
Most of the empiricalliterature on gender
differ ences in th e labou r mar ket has
focu sed e ith er ex clu sive ly on wa ge
dis cr i mina t io n or o cc up a ti ona l
segregation. Empirical research linking
bot h a sp ec ts of t he di ff er ent i at ed
situation of women in the labour market
is s ti ll s ca r ce. W hi le mu ch o f th e
economic research has been motivated
by the ‘taste for discrimination’approach
pr op os ed b y Be cke r ( 19 71 ), the
segregation dimension has merited less
attent ion within t his fra mework. T he
relative s car city of a pplied economic
research on the r elation ship bet ween
occupa tional segr egation a nd gender/
ethn ic wa ge dis cr imi nat ion ma y be
expl ain ed by th e fac t th at Be cker ’s
original model of discriminationdoes not
explicitly i ncorpor ate the s egregation
dimension. In this sense, Baldwin et al.
(20 01) p rop ose a n ext ension to t his
appr oach by inc luding a hier arc hical
dimension in which men dislike to work
for women even in the case they do not
object to work along side women. As a
result, their model not only predicts that
women’s participation is exponentially
decreasing with respect to job hierarchy
but also that women’s wagedisadvantage
in mana ger ial pos iti ons is , at lea st ,
partially expla ined by a compensation
mechanism of men’s dislike for female
supervision.Although we do not attempt
an empir ica l tes t of al l prop osit ions
derived from Bal dwin et al.’s (20 01)
model, it is still relevant to highlight that
the connec tion b etween gender wage
dis cr i mina t io n an d oc cu pa ti on al
segregation is theoretically grounded.
Sincethe seminal contributionsof Oaxaca
(1973) and Blinder (1973), a number of
decomposition techniques of the gender
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