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Author: Cattan, Sarah Julie
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Cattan, Sarah Julie |
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Psychological Traits and the Gender Wage Gap Ph.D. Dissertation, The University of Chicago, 2012 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses (PQDT) Keyword(s): Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT); Gender Differences; Locus of Control (see Rotter Scale); Modeling; Noncognitive Skills; Self-Esteem; Wage Gap Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. This dissertation examines the role that psychological factors play in explaining the gender wage gap. To do so, I propose a methodology that extends the standard approach used in the literature interested in this question in three main dimensions. First, I rely on an economic model that captures multiple channels through which gender differences in traits can influence gender wage inequality. Second, I account for measurement error in the measures of psychological traits by using latent factor models. Third, I estimate entire counterfactual wage distributions in order to measure the contribution of gender differences in traits to the gender wage gap along the whole wage distribution instead of focusing on its mean. Implementing this methodology in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, I find that gender differences in cognition and self-confidence explain a considerable fraction of the gender wage gap, with the majority of this effect being due to gender differences in self-confidence. Moreover, I establish evidence of substantial heterogeneity in the effect that gender gaps in psychological traits have on the gender wage gap along the wage distribution. In particular, gender gaps in self-confidence and, to a lesser extent, cognition explain a greater fraction of the gender wage gap at the top than at the bottom of the wage distribution. By comparing my estimates to those obtained from implementing two standard decomposition methods widely used in the gender wage gap literature, I show that failing to account for the heterogeneity of returns to traits across occupations and for measurement error in observed measures of traits leads to substantial biases in the analysis of the role that psychological factors play in explaining the gender wage gap. |
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Bibliography Citation
Cattan, Sarah Julie. Psychological Traits and the Gender Wage Gap. Ph.D. Dissertation, The University of Chicago, 2012. |