published in: Journal of Comparative Economics, 2007, 35 (1), 170-187
We compare the importance of occupational gender segregation for the gender wage gap in
East and West Germany in 1995 using a sample of social-security wage records of full-time
workers. East Germany, which features a somewhat higher degree of occupational
segregation, has a gender wage gap on the order of one fifth of the West German gap.
Segregation is not related to the West German wage gap, but in East Germany, wages of
both men and women are higher in predominantly female occupations. East German female
employees apparently have better observable and unobservable characteristics than their
male colleagues. These findings are in contrast to a large U.S. literature, but are consistent
with the imposition of high wage levels in East Germany at the outset of reforms and the
selection of only high-skill women into employment. Finally, conditioning on unobservable
labor quality differences using the longitudinal dimension of the data, there is a negligible
impact of segregation in both parts of Germany.
We use cookies to provide you with an optimal website experience. This includes cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site as well as cookies that are only used for anonymous statistical purposes, for comfort settings or to display personalized content. You can decide for yourself which categories you want to allow. Please note that based on your settings, you may not be able to use all of the site's functions.
Cookie settings
These necessary cookies are required to activate the core functionality of the website. An opt-out from these technologies is not available.
In order to further improve our offer and our website, we collect anonymous data for statistics and analyses. With the help of these cookies we can, for example, determine the number of visitors and the effect of certain pages on our website and optimize our content.