Gender wage gap by occupational groups in Poland

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the gender wage gap in Poland in different occupational groups. The authors aim to investigate how much of the raw differences in wages can be explained by differences in personal characteristics and in which occupational groups the unexplained part of wage gap is the highest. The authors use the individual data from employers’ statistics with detailed information about wages and personal characteristics of workers. The authors use base salaries per hour as the dependent variable. After controlling for differences in the gender composition of occupational groups the authors choose 24 occupational groups at 3-digit level and perform Oaxaca-Blinder two-component decomposition. The authors are the first to analyse the differences in gender wage gap in Poland by occupational groups. Another original contribution is that the wage gap is analysed not for the whole sample but after controlling for the segregation effect. The results indicate that firstly, the raw differences by gender in base wages per hour are smaller than the ones in average wages per hour. Secondly, after controlling for differences in the gender composition of occupational groups the raw wage gap in Poland increases from 6.7% to 10.8%. Thirdly, in most of the analysed occupational groups the differences in characteristics explain only a minor part of the wage gap. The highest share of the unexplained part was among managers and in groups in which the specific vocational skills are required.