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Many countries implemented wage compensation measures during the COVID-19 crisis to alleviate income losses and avoid employment reductions. We focus on the gender dimension of incomes in Estonia, which has been grappling with the highest gender wage gap in Europe, and investigate whether the crisis and related wage compensation may have worsened existing gender imbalances. Using detailed administrative datasets and EUROMOD microsimulation model, we show that the COVID-19 crisis had a significant negative effect on employment income for both men and women, but the wage compensation implemented in 2020 appeared to cushion these effects. Income losses were slightly higher for men, but the cushioning effect of the compensation was higher for women. Overall, income-related gender disparities did not change significantly during the crisis. Still, the wage compensation measure has contributed to preventing income-related gender disparities increasing further, particularly in the hotels and restaurants sector and wholesale and retail trade sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates the gender wage gap in relation to the multi-dimensional human capital measure, asking which human capital components are most valued in the European labour markets. Relying on the Programme of International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) data for seventeen European countries and applying Gelbach (2016) decomposition, we document remarkable cross-country disparities in the returns to different human capital components. The only dimension that consistently and significantly decreases gender wage disparities in all countries is work experience related to a currently occupied position. Numeracy cognitive ability is another strong predictors of the gender wage disparity, while job-specific cognitive and non-cognitive skills reveal weaker than expected association with the gender wage gap. Unlike the studies stressing the decreasing importance of human capital in the gender wage gap assessment, we argue that a narrow definition of human capital may undermine the actual effect of the latter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]