Gender Wage Gap: Within and Across Borders

Abstract

Abstract This paper aims to explore gender wage differential at the wage distribution decile level. We define “real wage” with one of the most tangible adjustment measures, “Big Mac Index”. We study wages equivalent to the number of Big Mac burgers (per day) of men and women belonging to different wage distribution deciles for 21 countries and for the priod of 2000 to 2013. We find that, across countries, the higher the GDP per capita, the larger the gender wage gap. The “wealthy” European countries have the lowest female to male wage ratio. High female participation in part-time jobs may be a reason for that. Meanwhile, Latin American countries with the lowest GDP per capita in our study have the highest ratio of female to male wages. As expected, we also find that within a country, the higher the wage decile, the larger the gender wage inequality.