The Gender Wage Gap in Peru: Drivers, Evolution, and Heterogeneities
Giannina Vaccaro

Abstract

Using the Peruvian National Household Survey (ENAHO) from 2006 to 2018, this paper provides a descriptive evolution of the Peruvian gender wage gap and identifies key variables that explain the differences. By exploiting various sources of heterogeneity and using an Oaxaca-Blinder (O-B) decomposition, this paper shows that the raw wage gap increases between 2006-2011 from 5% to 10%, but they did not change much afterwards. The unexplained wage gap has remained virtually unchanged during the period of analysis, at around 15%. After correcting for the participation decision, we find that the raw wage gap increases from 5% to 22% , but the explained and unexplained wage gaps do not change much by correcting for endogenous selection into the labor force. We show the presence of significant gender wage differences across geographical regions, and along the wage distribution. Heterogeneities in gender wage gaps are also present for different population subgroups such as workers with different educational background, working in the private and public sector, as well as formal and informal workers. These heterogeneities in gender wage gaps might be explained by the presence of sticky floors and glass ceiling.

Speaker

Giannina Vaccaro (PhD in Economics) is an applied micro-economist with more than 10 years of experience working in Switzerland and overseas (England, the United States, and Peru). Giannina has broad experience in policy evaluation and econometric analysis. She uses economic models and a wide set of methodological approaches to answer economic questions, especially related to labor economics and gender equality. By identifying and analyzing large administrative and granular individual level datasets, Giannina provided insights for improving social welfare and firm’s productivity. Dr Vaccaro currently works as senior researcher at the Swiss Centre of Expertise in the Social Sciences (FORS) and the Social Sciences Faculty at the University of Lausanne (UNIL) in Switzerland.