Attitudes and personality in the Australian gender wage gap

ABSTRACT

This paper estimates the effects of gender role attitudes and personality traits on the gender wage gap in Australia. Applying standard decomposition techniques and controlling for a wide range of variables, the paper finds that at least 67.8% of the total gender wage gap of 17.4% in 2019 remains unexplained – a figure which is lower than previous years. The results establish gender role attitudes as a key predictor of this pay gap both in the explained and unexplained part of the wage decomposition. It also shows that the impact of personality traits depends on whether the big five traits or the sub-traits are used in the analysis. Even some of the sub-traits belonging to the same category can influence the gender pay gap in opposite directions. Overall, the estimates establish the importance of psychological variables as more important than traditional human capital and other work-related characteristics in explaining the remaining gender wage gap in Australia.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender wage gap
• wage decompositions
• discrimination
• gender role attitudes
• personality
• Australia

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• J31
• J71

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We follow Sjöberg (2004), Guiso and Rustichini (2018), Egmond et al. (2010) and Alesina, Giuliano, and Nunn (2013) to identify the relevant statements.