Another Look at the Francophone Wage Gap in Canada: Public and Private Sectors, Quebec and Outside Quebec.

Using a variant of the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition method, I find that outside Quebec, in both public and private sectors, the wage premium enjoyed by anglophones between 1970 and 2000 can be fully explained by a higher relative demand for English skills. However, I find that in Quebec's public sector between 1970 and 2000, francophones enjoyed a wage premium that may have reflected more than a higher relative demand for French skills, opening the possibility of discrimination as a factor. Such a premium also seems to have been present in Quebec's private sector in 2000. In particular, as was the case in 1970 for francophones, in 2000 anglophones in Quebec's private sector could not gain access to the market premium for the other language group by becoming bilingual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]