Gender Wage Gap, Selection Bias, and Wage Decomposition: Evidence from Higher Education Expansion in Taiwan

• Main Authors: Ming-Chun Lee, 李明純
• Other Authors: 黃芳玫
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2019
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/5zzret

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 農業經濟學研究所 === 107 === Since the 1980s, Taiwan has experienced a series of higher education expansions. In this process, the net enrollment rate of higher education has changed from male to female. Since 1988, it has changed to female surpassing male. The wage gap between genders is also shrinking year by year. Gender differences in wages have always been one of the topics of concern to labor scholars in various countries. There is no shortage of discussion on this topic in Taiwan. However, choices for female labor participation behavior causes selection bias problem. This problem might make estimates bias, so correcting selection bias is very important for exploring gender pay differences. Although Taiwan''s literature has partly considered this problem, there has been no systematic discussion on the results before and after the correction of selective errors. Therefore, the main purpose of this study is to explore the impact of the rapid expansion of higher education in Taiwan on gender pay differences over the past 35 years. That further subdivides into the following two methods: (1) using the Gronau-Heckman-Roy model to consider the selection bias of women''s full-time work on the impact of gender pay differences, (2) using the Neuman and Oaxaca model to decompose wage gap into the role of price, factor factors, and selection bias. This study used the "Manpower Utilization Survey" of Taiwan to select four groups of periods from 1983 to 1987, 1993 to 1997, 2003 to 2007, and 2013 to 2017 as the pre-expansion of higher education, and initial, intermediate and recent period of post-expansion of higher education. Also, limit the age of the sample to 25 to 54 years old. The empirical results of the Gronau-Heckman-Roy model show that women''s choice behavior is a significant negative selection behavior in pre-expansion of higher education, which means that a high proportion of female full-time labor market is low human capital labor. After the expansion of education, it was also negative but less significant in the initial stage. It was not until the intermediate expansion of higher education it changed to positive selection behavior. It indicates that the female full-time labor market has transformed into a labor force that is conducive to high human capital. In addition, ceteris paribus assumption, in the comparison of the four periods, the degree of education has the least change in the selective bias of the some college degree or above, and the marital status has the smallest change in the selective bias of the unmarried. In the process of narrowing the gender pay gap in the four periods, the result of the current wage decomposition is that the price factor is the main factor causing the current gender pay gap. The selection bias is one of the factors that caused the gap before and after the expansion of higher education. In the intermediate and recent expansion of higher education, it turned into an offsetting effect on the wage gap. Except to the pre- expansion period of higher education, the characteristic factor has the effect of reducing the wage gap in other periods and the contribution has gradually increased. Additionally, after decomposing the contribution of each explanatory variable to characteristic factor, it founds that the contribution of some colleges and universities is increasing year by year. As a result, the expansion of higher education can indeed narrow the gender pay gap through improving the human capital of women. Last, decompose the inter-temporal wage gap from the expansion of higher education to the recent. After about 35 years, the three major factors change is one of the roles to narrow the wage gap. Characteristic factors narrows the gender wage gap through the expansion of higher education to enhance women''s human capital. The reduction of gender discrimination have also contributed to the narrowing of the gender pay gap, and the change in women’s full-time job choices has contributed to it the most.