Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/224043 
Year of Publication: 
2020
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 13601
Publisher: 
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
We show that parts of the unexplained wage gap in standard Oaxaca-Blinder decompositions result from the neglect of the role played by the family for individual wages. We present a simple model of dual-earner households facing a trade-off regarding whose career to promote and show analytically that the standard Oaxaca-Blinder approach overestimates the degree of pay discrimination. Unbiased decompositions can be obtained when the Oaxaca-Blinder wage equation is augmented by the characteristics of the individual's partner. In an empirical application, we find that this extended decomposition explains considerably larger shares of the gender wage gap than does the standard decomposition.
Subjects: 
Oaxaca-Blinder
gender wage gap
dual-earner households
discrimination
JEL: 
J31
J16
J12
J71
J24
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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