by Jim Rose in discrimination, economics of education, gender, human capital, labour economics, occupational choice Tags: asymmetric marriage premium, compensating differentials, economics of fertility, gender wage gap, marriage and divorce, reversing gender gap

Today’s women who are well-established in their careers in their 30s and 40s are doing better than their mothers who are also tertiary educated in terms of closing the gender wage gap. The gender wage gap in the chart below is unadjusted. It is the raw gender wage gap for women aged 35 to 44 and for women aged 55 to 64.

Source: Indicator A6 What are the earnings advantages from education? – Education at a Glance 2014 – OECD iLibrary.

In Canada and the USA there is been no progress at all. In New Zealand, the gender gap between male and female tertiary educated workers is a little larger for today’s prime age women graduates than for older female workers who completed a tertiary education.

I suspect that gender gap be no smaller for today’s career women as compared to two decades ago has something to do with compensating differentials.

Today’s career women want it all: both motherhood and a career. They trade-off work-life balance for wages.

Women choose university degrees and occupations that are more agreeable to a balancing motherhood and a career.