Private-public sector employment choice and wage differential in Palestine:a gender perspective

Daoud, Yousef and Shanti, Ruba (2011): Private-public sector employment choice and wage differential in Palestine:a gender perspective.

Abstract

This paper investigates employment sector choice for Palestinian men and women, the paper analyzes wage differential by gender and sector. The paper utilizes Palestine Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) Labor Force Surveys for the years 1999, 2001, 2007, and 2010. Although returns to education by gender has been analyzed before, this paper is the first to analyze wage differential and sector choice by gender. The results indicate that there are stark differences by gender from the view point of sector choice, returns to education, and decomposition of sector and gender wage differentials. Low returns to education tend to diminish the importance of the endowment effect in explaining the sector and gender wage gaps. The Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition of the gender wage differential shows higher predicted log hourly wages for females than for males for all years in the public sector, for the private and “other” sectors, the results are mixed. The sector wage gap reflects a higher predicted log hourly wage in favor of public and “other” compared to private; this result is not surprising given that more lower educational levels are found to be in the private sector than the remaining sectors.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Wage Differential; Sector Choice; Gender; Palestine; Returns to Schooling
• Subjects: J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J3 - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs > J31 - Wage Level and Structure ; Wage Differentials; J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J2 - Demand and Supply of Labor > J24 - Human Capital ; Skills ; Occupational Choice ; Labor Productivity

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