Recent trends in the gender wage gap in Portugal: a distributional analysis

ABSTRACT

Portugal displays a persistent gender wage gap which increased during the 2010–2013 economic crisis. This paper aims at examining the developments in the gender wage gap for the private sector from 2009 to 2019 using a decomposition across the wage distribution. We conclude that the gap has decreased at the lower and middle quantiles but remains quite wide at the top. The largest part of the gap stems from the structure effect, which suggests persistent discrimination.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender wage gap
• decomposition
• reweighing
• wage distribution

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• J16
• J31
• J71
• C21

Disclosure statement

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

Data availability statement

Data was obtained from INE (Instituto Nacional de Estatística) under the agreement between the Ministry of Science and Technology of Portugal and INE. Further information on how to access the data can be found at: http://www.dgeec.mec.pt/np4/46/

Additional information

Funding

This research is financed by National Funds of the FCT – Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology [UIDB/04007/2020]