Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/36215 
Year of Publication: 
2009
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 4289
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
This paper examines whether men's and women's noncognitive skills influence their occupational attainment and, if so, whether this contributes to the disparity in their relative wages. We find that noncognitive skills have a substantial effect on the probability of employment in many, though not all, occupations in ways that differ by gender. Consequently, men and women with similar noncognitive skills enter occupations at very different rates. Women, however, have lower wages on average not because they work in different occupations than men do, but rather because they earn less than their male colleagues employed in the same occupation. On balance, women's noncognitive skills give them a slight wage advantage. Finally, we find that accounting for the endogeneity of occupational attainment more than halves the proportion of the overall gender wage gap that is unexplained.
Subjects: 
Noncognitve skills
personality
occupation
gender wage gap
decomposition
JEL: 
J16
J24
J31
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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