Male-Female wage gap and informal employment in Bangladesh: A quantile regression approach

Rahman, Mustafizur and Al-Hasan, Md. (2018): Male-Female wage gap and informal employment in Bangladesh: A quantile regression approach.

Abstract

This article undertakes an examination of Bangladesh’s latest available Quarterly Labour Force Survey 2015-2016 data to draw indepth insights as regards gender wage gap and wage discrimination in Bangladesh labour market. Mean wage decomposition shows that an average woman in Bangladesh earns 12.2 per cent lower wage than man, and about half of the wage gap can be explained by labour market discrimination against women. Quantile Counterfactual Decomposition shows that women are subjected to higher wage penalty at the lower deciles of the wage distribution with the wage gap varying between 8.3 per cent to 19.4 per cent at different deciles. We established that at lower deciles a significant part of the gender wage gap is on account of the relatively larger presence of informal employment. Conditional quantile estimates further reveals that formally employed female workers earn higher wage than their male counterparts at the first decile but suffer from wage penalty at the top deciles.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Gender wage gap, Oaxaca-Blinder Decomposition, Quantile Decomposition, Informal Employment, Quantile Regression
• Subjects: C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods > C2 - Single Equation Models ; Single Variables > C21 - Cross-Sectional Models ; Spatial Models ; Treatment Effect Models ; Quantile Regressions; J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J3 - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs > J31 - Wage Level and Structure ; Wage Differentials; J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J4 - Particular Labor Markets > J46 - Informal Labor Markets; J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J7 - Labor Discrimination > J70 - General

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