The Causes of Gender Wage Gap in Taiwan: Human Capital v.s. Attitude

• Main Authors: Ya-Fang Cheng, 鄭雅方
• Other Authors: 林亦珍
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2010
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/60770755240216263988

碩士 === 淡江大學 === 經濟學系碩士班 === 98 === This paper investigates the role of attitudes in gender wage gap in Taiwan using the Social Change Survey 2007. We include six variables measuring individual’s attitudes in the wage regression: satisfaction with life, negative feeling, risk attitude, perception of social justice, trust, and ambition. Heckman’s sample selection bias correction method is employed to ensure that our estimates are consistent. We instrument the attitude variables in order to account for the potential endogeneity and simultaneity problems. The Oaxaca-Ransom decomposition results indicate that the gender wage gap is between 0.5556 and 0.5961. The rate of return on male human capital variables is higher than female, thereby widening the wage gap by 1.4334. The rate of return on female attitude variables is higher than that of male, shrinking the wage gap by 0.6018. Males on average posses less human capital than female, causing the gender wage gap to shrink by 0.0069. Differences in the level of attitude variables decrease the wage gap by 0.2299. These findings indicate that differences in attitudes and the rate of returns to attitudes combined decrease the gender wage gap by 0.8317. Since females enjoy higher returns to attitudes, they can effectively increase their wages by adjusting their attitude.