Search

As gender equality is a priority for 17 sustainable development goals, it is appropriate to establish a correlation between the Gender Gap Index (GGI), economic efficiency and governance. Three hypotheses have been investigated. It is established that there is no general direct relationship between the level of GGI and GDP per capita growth (annual) for all countries, regardless of their level of development. In the UK, small fluctuations in GDP per capita growth (annual) do not affect GGI levels; however, the Covid-19 pandemic does have its impact. In Germany, any fluctuations in GDP per capita growth (annual) do not affect the level of GGI, yet it is affected by changes in population, in particular by increasing migration. In Ukraine, significant fluctuations in GDP per capita growth (annual) do not affect the level of GGI, although this index is reduced by the effects of the pandemic a year after its onset. In addition, the relationship between the population, civil servants, their distribution by sex, average wages and GDP per capita growth (annual) and, consequently, the welfare of the population of these countries was established. The obvious efficiency of the UK's and Germany's strategic governance systems has different implications for achieving gender equality and well-being. It is proposed to use the Windmill economic model to achieve gender equality among civil servants in the developing country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monthly wage inequality in Germany continued to increase in the early 2000s, which is mainly explained by a rising part-time employment share. After 2010, inequality returned to the level of 2000. About half of the recent decrease is due to the introduction of the national minimum wage in 2015. While employment effects of the minimum wage are negligible, we find strong wage increases among the existing workforce. The minimum wage lowered wage inequality within eastern and western Germany but also led to a convergence of the east-west wage differential. The increased labor incomes were not offset by decreasing social benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present new descriptive evidence on the immigrant-native gap in risk and time preferences in Germany, one of immigrants' most preferred destination countries. Using the recent waves of the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) dataset, we find that the immigrant-native gap in risk preferences has widened for recent immigration cohorts, especially around the time of the 2015 European Refugee Crisis. We attribute the recent widening to decreased assimilation rates of new immigrants caused by reduced integration due to sudden increases in immigrants flows from culturally diverse parts of the world, particularly around the year 2015. We also find that the immigrant-native gap varies across different migrant groups: "Opportunity seekers," which we define as economic immigrants who intend to stay in Germany only temporarily, are very similar in their risk preferences to natives. Other immigrants, however, are substantially more risk averse than natives. A smaller gap in risk preferences is also found among migrants who are female, highly educated, proficient in the host language, self-employed, and working in predominantly high-skilled jobs. Concerning time preferences, a noticeably large immigrant-native gap is evident, but the gap does not vary across most individual-level socio-economic variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to the literature on persistent gender inequalities in the labour market by investigating gender role attitudes in Germany and their association with labour market behaviour. Based on the German Panel Study 'Labour Market and Social Security' (PASS), longitudinal analyses are applied to examine the influence of gender role attitudes and the household context on various employment states. The results reveal that gender role attitudes are crucial for labour market behaviour and that there are differences among women and men in different household contexts. Whereas single men and women do not differ significantly in their employment probabilities, women in couple households are less active in the labour market than their male counterparts. Furthermore, differences in employment are largest in couples with children. Among women, differences in full-time employment by household context become smaller when these women hold egalitarian attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We conduct a decomposition analysis based on recentred influence function (RIF) regressions to disentangle the relative importance of automation and robotization for wage inequality in the manufacturing sector in Germany between 1996 and 2017. Our measure of automation threat combines occupation‐specific scores of automation risk with sector‐specific robot densities. We find that besides changes in the composition of individual characteristics, structural shifts among different automation threat groups are a non‐negligible factor associated with wage inequality between 1996 and 2017. Moreover, the increase in wage dispersion among the different automation threat groups has contributed significantly to higher wage inequality in the 1990s and 2000s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using representative data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), this paper finds a statistically significant union wage premium in Germany of almost three percent, which is not simply a collective bargaining premium. Given that the union membership fee is typically about one percent of workers' gross wages, this finding suggests that it pays off to be a union member. Our results show that the wage premium differs substantially between various occupations and educational groups, but not between men and women. We do not find that union wage premia are higher for those occupations and workers which constitute the core of union membership. Rather, unions seem to care about disadvantaged workers and pursue a wider social agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although wage inequality is an important and widely studied issue, the literature is vastly silent on the relationship between firm entry and exit and the wage dispersion between firms. Using a 50% random administrative sample of West German establishments over the period 1976–2017, I study wage dispersion dynamics between and within the groups of entering, exiting, and incumbent establishments by examining the distribution of average wages across establishments. The results show that entering establishments became increasingly unequal over time, thereby contributing to the rise in wage dispersion between establishments. However, exit rates of young and low-wage establishments have dampened this effect. These findings suggest considering the consequences for wage inequality when designing and assessing policy instruments for firm entry and exit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the evolution of three higher education wage differentials from 1996 to 2019 in Germany. We distinguish between degrees from academic universities, degrees from universities of applied sciences, and the master craftsman\craftswoman certificate. The educational reference category is a standard degree within the German vocational education and training system. Based on samples of male and female workers from the Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP), regression methods show that all three educational wage differentials in 2019 exceeded the ones in 1996. However, workers graduating from universities experienced an inverse u-shape pattern with a maximum of about 0.5 log points around 2012. Since then, their wage differential decreased by nearly ten percent (about 0.045 log points). Although the decrease is not statistically significant at conventional levels, we think that nearly ten percent can be regarded as economically meaningful. We argue that this pattern is related to university expansion and changes in graduates' subject-choice composition during that expansion. The paper concludes with a discussion of possible alternative explanations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is often stated that certain occupations in Germany, because of "Demographic Change ", are dwindling, implying a labor shortage. We investigate the 10-year wage growth of young employees entering the labor market in different occupations. Our findings suggest that regional labor market tightness in occupational fields significantly explains wage growth. Individuals who start their careers in a tighter labor market enjoy higher wage growth than workers in more relaxed labor markets. We identify some occupational fields where the effect is especially strong, such as several engineering groups, IT occupations, technicians, and some commercial occupations. Interestingly, health-care occupations reveal a reverse relation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Works councils provide an essential mechanism for worker participation in decision‐making. While the literature has extensively explored their impact on worker and establishment outcomes, the negotiation process between works council representatives and their employer has remained largely unexplored. This article contributes to filling this gap by investigating wage discrimination towards works councilors in Germany. Fixed effects models leveraging panel data show that councilors receive a wage premium that positively correlates with the sectoral coverage of collective bargaining. In the manufacturing sector, where the tradition of bargaining is heavily entrenched, employers positively discriminate councilors. In contrast, in the service sector, where the culture of bargaining is weak, employers penalize works councilors. In both sectors, partisan and unionized works councilors are the most affected. The most likely hypothesis to explain these results is that employers strategically discriminate these councilors in order to bypass the traditional constraints of establishment‐level participation. This article therefore questions the quality of industrial democracy in Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gender pay gaps are commonly studied in populations with already completed educational careers. We focus on an earlier stage by investigating the gender pay gap among university students working alongside their studies. With data from five cohorts of a large-scale student survey from Germany, we use regression and wage decomposition techniques to describe gender pay gaps and potential explanations. We find that female students earn about 6% less on average than male students, which reduces to 4.1% when accounting for a rich set of explanatory variables. The largest explanatory factor is the type of jobs male and female students pursue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates whether non‐base compensation contributes to the gender pay gap (GPG). Using administrative data from Germany, we find in wage decompositions that lower bonus payments to women explain about 10 per cent of the gap at the mean and at different quantiles of the unconditional wage distribution whereas the lower prevalence of shift premia and overtime pay among women is unimportant. Among managers, the contribution of bonuses to the mean gap more than doubles and is steadily rising as one moves up the wage distribution. Our findings suggest that gender differences in bonuses are an important contributor to the GPG, particularly in top jobs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following a national lockdown in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, state governments in Germany published lists of "essential" occupations that were considered necessary to maintain basic services such as health care, social care, food production and transport. This paper examines working conditions in these essential occupations and identifies clusters of similar jobs. Differences across clusters are highlighted using detailed data on job characteristics including working conditions, tasks and educational requirements. Two clusters with favourable or average working conditions account for more than three-quarters of jobs in essential occupations. Another two clusters, comprising 20% of jobs in essential occupations, are associated with unfavourable working conditions such as low pay, job insecurity, poor prospects for advancement and low autonomy. These latter clusters exhibit high shares of migrants. An Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition is used to investigate which individual characteristics explain why migrants are more likely to have unfavourable working conditions. The results suggest that lacking proficiency in the host-country language is the main barrier to improving migrants' working conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author investigates the different influences of labor shortage on wages in firms with or without collective bargaining agreements. In addition to training, technological solutions, and organizational flexibility, employers can also offer higher wages at a constant employment level to fill vacancies if the current payments are lower than the marginal revenue of the workers. Firms with collective bargaining agreements probably already pay wages according to marginal revenue or, in the case of rent sharing, above it, and the remuneration is probably also not adjusted. Using wage regressions with panel data for German establishments, this paper shows that collective bargaining and a lack of skilled workers can lead to higher wages. However, the latter only applies to firms that are not bound by collective agreements. Hence, wage differentials between these firms decrease, providing further explanation for a countercyclical development of the wage premium from the collective bargaining agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

To explore whether changes in the selection into full-time work among German men were a driver in the rise in wage inequality since the mid-1990s, we propose a modification of selection-corrected quantile regressions. Addressing Huber and Melly's (J Appl Econom 30(7):1144–1168, 2015) concerns, this modification allows us to estimate the effects of selection with respect to both observables and unobservables. Our findings show that those employed in 1995 would have had lower wages in 2010 than those employed in 2010 and wage dispersion would have been higher, suggesting that full-time workers have become less heterogeneous over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study provides new evidence on the levels of economic integration experienced by foreigners and naturalised immigrants relative to native Germans from 1994 to 2015. We decompose the wage gap using the method for unconditional quantile regression models by employing a regression of the (recentered) influence function (RIF) of the gross hourly wage on a rich set of explanatory variables. This approach enables us to estimate contributions made across the whole wage distribution. To allow for a detailed characterisation of labour market conditions, we consider a comprehensive set of socio-economic and labour-related aspects capturing influences of, e.g., human capital quality, cultural background, and the personalities of immigrants. The decomposition results clearly indicate a significant growing gap with higher wages for both foreigners (13.6 to 17.6%) and naturalised immigrants (10.0 to 16.4%). The findings further display a low explanation for the wage gap in low wage deciles that is even more pronounced within immigrant subgroups. Cultural and economic distances each correlate strongly with wages. A different appreciation of foreign educational qualifications, however, widens the wage gap substantially by 4.5%points on average. Moreover, we observe an indication of deterioration of immigrants' human capital endowments over time relative to those of native Germans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors investigate immigrants’ and natives’ labor supply to the firm within an estimation approach based on a dynamic monopsony framework. Applying duration models that account for unobserved worker heterogeneity to a large administrative employer–employee data set for Germany, they find that immigrants supply labor less elastically to firms than do natives. Under monopsonistic wage setting, the estimated elasticity differential predicts a 7.7 log points wage penalty for immigrants thereby accounting for the entire unexplained native–immigrant wage differential of 5.8 to 8.2 log points. When further distinguishing immigrant groups differing in their time spent in the German labor market, their immigration cohort, and their age at entry, the authors find that the observed unexplained wage differential is larger for those groups that show a larger elasticity differential relative to natives. These findings not only suggest that search frictions are a likely cause of employers’ more pronounced monopsony power over their immigrant workers but also imply that employers profit from discriminating against immigrants. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Worker participation in decision‐making is often associated with high‐wage and high‐productivity firm strategies. Using linked employer–employee data for Germany and worker fixed effects from a two‐way fixed‐effects model of wages capturing observed and unobserved worker quality, we find that plants with formal worker participation via works councils indeed employ higher quality workers. We show that worker quality is already higher in plants before council introduction and further increases after the introduction. Importantly, we corroborate previous studies by showing positive productivity and profitability effects even after taking into account worker sorting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analysing wage differentials due to educational investments within occupations can explain the persistent wage inequality in western industrialised countries, such as Germany. This article contributes to the discussion by examining occupation-specific variance in wage returns for men working full-time in Western Germany between 1976 and 2010. We distinguish between three groups: employees with a vocational education and training (VET) degree with an Abitur (a certificate allowing entrance into a German university), with a VET degree but no Abitur, or with a university degree. First, we theoretically argue why wage returns vary within educational levels across occupations. Second, on the assumption that wage return variance will be greater at higher educational levels, we investigate wage return variance patterns for VET and university graduates over time. Estimating a two-stage multilevel model using the Sample of Integrated Labour Market Biographies (SIAB), we show that holding an Abitur increases wage return variance across occupations. Moreover, we find a significantly higher occupation-specific variance in wage returns to education for university graduates than for VET graduates. For the period under examination, we reveal a fluctuating variance in wage returns for VET graduates and a slightly decreasing variance for university graduates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A quarter of a century after Germany's reunification, Eastern Germans still earn substantially less than Western Germans. This paper revisits the German wage differential and isolates the effect of differing returns to human capital endowments, the possibility of a location effect, and human capital depreciation on the regional wage gap. While the endowment effect, location effect, and human capital depreciation jointly account for the wage differential between Easterners and Westerners living in the West, the same does not hold true for individuals settled in the East, where part of the wage gap remains unexplained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the author proposes a new method for measuring wage discrimination that builds on the methodology first developed by Hellerstein and Neumark (1999). The author's method has three main advantages: It is robust to labor market segregation, it does not impose linearity on the wage-setting equation, and it is not only a test for discrimination but also produces a measure of discrimination. Using matched employer-employee data from Germany, the author finds that immigrants are being discriminated against. They receive wages that are 13% lower than native workers in the same firm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article advances a couple-level framework to examine how parenthood shapes within-family gender inequality by education in three countries that vary in their normative and policy context: the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom. We trace mothers' share of couple earnings and variation by her education in the 10-year window around first birth, using long-running harmonized panel surveys from the 1990s and 2000s (N = 4,117 couples and 28,488 couple-years) and an event study methodology that leverages within-couple variation in earnings pre- and post-birth. Our results show steep declines in her share of couple earnings following first birth across the three countries that persist over several years of follow-up. Declines are smallest in the United States, due to U.S. mothers' higher employment and longer work hours. Declines are also smaller among female partners without a college degree in the United States, where mothers have less work-family support and fewer options to manage work and family on one income. Results shed light on how parenthood plays into gender inequality within couples, and how country context shapes couple dynamics and inequality across households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the relation of gender wage inequality to occupational licensing in Germany in 1993 and 2015. We show that the very particular German licensing system and strong gender segregation lead to an overrepresentation of women in licensed occupations. We further investigate, whether both genders benefit equally from licensing in terms of wages. Finally, we study whether both women's overrepresentation and potential gender gaps within licensed occupations help to explain patterns in the overall gender wage gap. To this end, we distinguish licensed occupations in professions and semi-professions. We use 1993 and 2015 waves of the German Socio-Economic Panel Study to apply repeated cross-sectional regressions and decompositions. Our findings suggest that women benefited more from licensing in 1993 than in 2015. Men's wage premiums seem to increase over time, but women's premiums do not. We also show that semi-professions are less rewarding and women are overrepresented in these occupations. Finally, increased demand for licensed occupations is an important contribution to narrowing the gender wage gap. Women's increased employment in licensed occupations alone would have reduced the overall gender wage gap by roughly 8 per cent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the sources of wage growth of young male workers in two countries with very different labor market institutions, the United States and Germany. The author first develops a simple method for decomposing wage growth into components due to general human capital accumulation, firm-specific human capital accumulation, and job search. The empirical analysis uses data from administrative records (Germany) and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (United States) for cohorts entering the labor market in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Although the two countries differed substantially in mobility rates, they were similar in the sources of wage growth, with general human capital accumulation being the most important single source and job search accounting for an additional 25% or more of total wage growth. There is no evidence that returns to firm-specific human capital accumulation were higher for German apprentices than for U.S. high school dropouts or graduates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using rich linked employer–employee data for (West) Germany between 1996 and 2014, we conduct a decomposition analysis based on recentered influence function (RIF) regressions to analyze the relative contributions of various plant and worker characteristics to the rise in German wage dispersion. Moreover, we separately investigate the sources of between‐plant and within‐plant wage dispersion. We find that industry effects and the collective bargaining regime contribute the most to rising wage inequality. In the case of collective bargaining, both the decline in collective bargaining coverage and the increase in wage dispersion among the group of covered plants have played important roles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper updates and deepens our understanding of the wage performance of immigrants in Germany. Using the German Socio‐Economic Panel, it documents that immigrant workers initially earn on average 20% less than native workers with otherwise identical characteristics. The gap is smaller for immigrants from advanced countries, with good German language skills, and with a German degree, and larger for others. The gap declines gradually over time but at a decreasing rate and much faster for more recent cohorts. Less success in obtaining jobs with higher occupational autonomy explains half of the wage gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The individual pay level is an emotionally discussed subject. Some pay differentials evince significant characteristics which are analysed in scientific literature. There are three significant pay gaps of particular significance to Germany: the gender pay gap between women and men of more than 20 percent, the regional pay gap especially between West and East Germany caused by differences in productivity and the pay gap between the private and public sector. This article investigates a previously unobserved pay gap within the public sector. By analysing a data collection, specific pay differentials in municipal administrations are determined. These differentials exist despite identical labour output in administration services in German municipalities and are caused by specific regional and economic determinants. So, the municipalities of East German Federal States and financially weak West German Federal States evince a pay level of municipal employees below average. Generally, there is a significant pay gap between East and West German municipalities. In addition, this article analyses the structure of the identified pay differences by separating the municipal employees according to their specific pay and qualification categories. As a result, East German municipalities have a smaller number of staff in the higher grade of the civil service and their pay level is below average. This effect is compensated by a higher number of staff in the middle grade of the civil service. The pay level of municipal employees in the middle grade of the civil service does not indicate significant difference among German municipalities. There are similar results in municipalities of financially weak West German Federal States. Despite identical administration services in municipalities, the pay level and pay structure evince interjurisdictional differentials. The results suggest that equal pay for equal work is not even in public service. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses wage differentials between permanent and temporary workers in the 25-40 age bracket using the 2010 European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) wave data for France, Germany and Italy. Applying a Recentered Influence Function (RIF) regression and a reweighting estimation technique, we investigate the contribution of personal and job characteristics to wage differentials across the wage distribution. Results point to a large unexplained component of the wage gap across the whole distribution in Italy, while this component is weaker in France among highly paid employees and insignificant in Germany. These findings highlight potential policy considerations and areas for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

German labor market reforms in the 1990s and 2000s are generally believed to have driven the large increase in the dispersion of current account balances in the Euro Area. We investigate this hypothesis quantitatively. We develop a three‐region open economy New Keynesian model with search and matching frictions from which we derive robust sign restrictions for wage bargaining and matching efficiency shocks which we term wage moderation shocks. We impose these restrictions on a Global VAR consisting of Germany and eight EMU countries to identify a wage moderation shock in Germany. Our results show that, although the German current account was significantly affected by wage moderation shocks, their contribution to European current account imbalances was negligible. We conclude that the German labor market reforms cannot be the lone driver of European imbalances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We conceptualize immigrant incorporation as a categorically driven process and contrast the bright distinctions between first-generation immigrants and natives, with more blurry second-generation contrasts. We analyze linked employer-employee data of a sample of 5,097 employees in 97 large German organizations and focus on first- and second-generation immigrants. We explore how generational status in the labor market and workplace contexts expands and contracts native-immigrant wage inequalities. We find a substantial average first-generation immigrant-native wage gap, which is not explained by individual human capital differences or most aspects of organizational context. In contrast, there is, on average, no second-generation wage gap, but there are substantial variations across workplaces. A series of results confirm predictions from relational inequality theory. For both first- and second-generation immigrants, working in a high-inequality workplace is associated with larger wage gaps. Second-generation immigrants perform better in workplaces where they have intersectional advantages over natives, and for first-generation immigrants collective bargaining protection narrows wage gaps with natives. Consistent with ethnic competition theory, in workplaces with very high shares of immigrant workers, the first-generation–native wage gap is larger. In contrast, increased contact between native Germans and second-generation immigrant coworkers reduces earnings gaps, but only up to a tipping point, after which competition processes reappear and earning gaps widen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Se investigan las diferencias salariales entre hombres y mujeres graduados universitarios al inicio de la vida activa en todos los percentiles de la distribución salarial. Tales diferencias se descomponen según el modelo de índice único de DiNardo, Fortin y Lemieux (1996) y Fortin y Lemieux (1998), analizando los efectos de la dotación, el precio y la función de rendimiento de competencias. Los salarios iniciales de los varones son más altos en todos los percentiles, con una brecha de magnitud variable. Los efectos de la dotación y el precio son favorables a los hombres. La diferencia en la función de rendimiento de competencias es ventajosa para las graduadas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses price information relating to 12 towns and wage information from 18 towns to develop a real wage index for unskilled urban labourers in Germany during the three-and-a-half centuries preceding the onset of rapid industrialization. Combining the new series with information from other parts of Europe establishes two stages of real wage divergence during the seventeenth to nineteenth century. The first occurred in the middle of the seventeenth century when real wages in centres of trade and finance located on the rim of the North Sea rose far above the level prevailing in their hinterland. The second stage unfolded from the second quarter of the eighteenth century when the real wage in south England, northern and central Italy, and Germany began to diverge; Germany followed a middle path between the other two countries. The second commercial revolution, which improved business techniques and promoted Smithian growth, goes a long way towards accounting for this development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gender pay gaps likely persist in Western societies because both men and women consider somewhat lower earnings for female employees than for otherwise similar male employees to be fair. Two different theoretical approaches explain "legitimate" wage gaps: same-gender referent theory and reward expectations theory. The first approach states that women compare their lower earnings primarily with that of other underpaid women; the second approach argues that both men and women value gender as a status variable that yields lower expectations about how much each gender should be paid for otherwise equal work. This article is the first to analyze hypotheses contrasting the two theories using an experimental factorial survey design. In 2009, approximately 1,600 German residents rated more than 26,000 descriptions of fictitious employees. The labor market characteristics of each employee and the amount of information given about them were experimentally varied across all descriptions. The results primarily support reward expectations theory. Both men and women produced gender pay gaps in their fairness ratings (with the mean ratio of just female-to-male wages being .92). Respondents framed the just pay ratios by the gender inequalities they experienced in their own occupations, and some evidence of gender-specific evaluation standards emerged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal for Labour Market Research is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Even though women today constitute the majority of higher education graduates, they still earn considerably less than their male counterparts. Previous research demonstrates that occupational sex segregation is important for understanding the gender wage gap, since occupations dominated by women pay less; yet less is known about why this is the case. This article explores two possible mechanisms: the devaluation of ‘female-typical’ work tasks and working-time arrangements. Hypotheses are tested by applying OLS regression and Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition analyses to the log hourly wages of a representative sample of German higher education graduates from 2001. Results confirm that occupational overtime increases and occupational part-time work decreases wages, indicating that occupations dominated by women pay less due to their ‘female-typical’ working-time arrangements. However, inconsistent with the devaluation thesis, tasks like teaching/educating increase wages for women, too, which speaks against a general lower value of ‘female-typical’ tasks, at least among the highly qualified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explore the effects of higher bodymass index (BMI) or obesity on different labourmarket outcomes. Weextend the present literature by investigating the effect of obesity on (i) promotion likelihood and (ii) unemployment duration, in addition to the effect on (iii) wages and (iv) probability of being employed. Wefind an obesity penalty on wages,employment likelihood, promotion likelihood and unemployment duration among females in Germany taking into account of endogeneity of BMI and sample selection. We are also able to identify an unexplained effect of obesity on wages, employment and promotion likelihood for females using decomposition techniques that can be attributed to weight discrimination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women are almost half of the workforce but Eurostat estimated that in 2014 they earn 16.1% less than men. There are many factors influencing wages which are connected with individual characteristics of employees and employers, together with the level of the economic development. The aim of our research is to determine factors influencing man and women wages in Germany and Poland applying econometric models estimated on the basis of microdata from Structure of Earning Survey. We also analyze if wage determinants are the same in both countries and for both genders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Negative wage effects of educational mismatch have become a stylized fact. Whether these are explained by differences in unobserved productivity or poor matching is still to be answered conclusively. In an empirical analysis based on data from the German Socio- Economic Panel and the International Adult Literacy Survey, a broad econometric strategy is applied to solve the problem of unobserved heterogeneity and reveal the mechanism underlying wage differences between matched and mismatched workers. Results show that wage differentials can be explained by a poor matching in the labor market, rejecting the hypothesis that mismatched workers compensate for unobserved productivity differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a new examination of the gender pay gap for Germany based on a family of distribution-sensitive indicators. Wage distributions for men and women do not only differ by a fixed constant; differences are more complex. We show that focusing on the bottom of the wage distribution reveals a larger gender gap. Our distribution-sensitive analysis can also be used to study whether the statistical disadvantage of women in average pay might be 'offset' by lower inequality. Over a broad range of plausible preferences over inequality, we show however that 'inequality-adjusted' estimates of the gap can be up to three times higher than standard inequality-neutral measures in Eastern Germany and up to fifty percent higher in Western Germany. Using preference parameters elicited from a hypothetical risky investment question in our sample, inequality-adjusted gender gap measures turn out to be close to those upper bounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the role wage dispersion across establishments has played in recent increases in total wage inequality in Germany and compares it to inequality changes at the individual level. It is queried whether the contribution of establishment heterogeneity to the rise of wage inequality stems from changes of institutional settings or from structures such as establishment size and the composition of the workforce. Design/methodology/approach – Applying regression-based decompositions of variance to German linked employer-employee panel data for the years 2000-2010 it is analysed to what extent changes associated to firm structures contribute to the rise of total wage inequality. Findings – Results show that the rise in wage inequality in Germany to a great extent is associated to rising wage variance across establishments, implying that establishment specific wage premiums have grown. By further decomposing across firm components of wage inequality, it is found that changes in across establishment wage inequality related to collective bargaining, worker co-determination and internal labour markets together account for about 3 per cent of the rise in total inequality. Inequality changes related to establishments’ skill and occupational composition account for about 11 per cent and establishment size alone accounts for about 18 per cent of the rise in total inequality. Originality/value – The main contribution is to quantify the relation of specific establishment characteristics to the rise in total wage inequality over time. Conclusions are drawn about the importance of mechanisms of rent sharing at the firm level in comparison to the determination of wages by individual qualification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to investigate, from a generational perspective, the effect of human capital on individual earnings and earnings differences in Germany, France and Italy, three developed countries in Western Europe with similarconservativewelfare regimes but with important differences in their education systems. Income inequalitiesbetweenandwithineducation levels are explored using a two-stage probit model with quantile regressions in the second stage. More precisely, drawing upon 2005 EU-SILC data, returns on schooling and experience are estimated separately for employees and self-employed full-time workers by means of Mincerian earnings equations with sample selection; the sample selection correction accounts for the potential individual self-selection into the two labour force types. Although some determinants appear to be relatively similar across countries, state-specific differentials are drawn in light of the institutional features of each national context. The study reveals how each dimension of human capital differently affects individuals’ earnings and earnings inequality and, most of all, how their impacts differ along the conditional earnings distribution and across countries. In the comparative perspective, the country's leading position in terms of the highest rewards on education also depends on which earnings distribution (employee vs. self-employed) is analysed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Sozialer Fortschritt is the property of Duncker & Humblot GmbH and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article provides a comparative analysis of the development of the gender wage gap in West Germany and Sweden during the period 1960–2006. Despite the economic similarities including broad social safety nets, the gap has developed differently since 1960. This analysis accounts for micro- and macroeconomic factors and politics and concludes that norms and traditions penetrate institutional settings and ensnare Germany in a cultural trap with regard to gender equality. While Sweden has moved to a two-earner model, German society expects mothers to stay at home. The micro analysis shows that family concerns (e.g. marriage and motherhood) decrease female income in Germany to a far greater extent than do such factors in Sweden, which can be explained in part by deeply held social attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

I use linked employer-employee data from the German Federal Statistical Office to estimate within-firm wage differentials between temporary workers with fixed-term contracts and workers with permanent contracts in the context of dual internal labor markets. Wage-tenure profiles of permanent workers are estimated separately for each firm to obtain a proxy for the prevalence of internal labor markets. Temporary workers earn significantly lower wages in firms with steeper wage-tenure profiles. This finding is consistent with the segmentation in a primary permanent workforce with high wages and a secondary temporary workforce with low wages, if internal labor markets are more prevalent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates how the effects of low-wage employment and non-employment on wage prospects vary depending on qualification. Based on theories on signalling effects, human capital and job search, we discuss why there may be heterogeneity in state dependence in both labour market states. We find that episodes of low-wage employment incur a significantly lower risk of future non-employment than episodes of non-employment for low-qualified workers. In contrast, for workers with a middle or high level of qualification the risk of non-employment is not significantly different when being low-paid instead of not employed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]