Differences in income distributions for men and women in Poland: An analysis using decomposition techniques

In the paper, we will compare income distributions in Poland, taking into account gender differences. Nowadays one can note an increase of interest towards studies of income (wages) inequalities. Numerous empirical studies tend to focus on the gender wage gaps. The findings of these studies show that males earn substantially higher wages than females. Women are paid only a part of what men with similar demographic characteristics, family situations, work hours, educational levels and work experience are paid. But the gender wage gap can only be partially explained by differences in men’s and women’s characteristics. The unexplained part of the pay gap is usually attributed to wage (income) discrimination (Blinder, 1973; Oaxaca, 1973).

The objective of this study is to extend the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition procedure to different quantile points along the income distribution. Various techniques for the decomposition of differences in income distributions were considered (Fortin, Lemieux, Firpo, 2010). We utilize such decomposition methods as the residual imputation approach (Juhn, Murphy, Pierce, 1993), the reweighting approach (DiNardo, Fortin, Lemieux, 1996) and recentered influence function (RIF) regression method (Firpo, Fortin, Lemieux, 2009) to describe differences between incomes of men and women along the two distributions.

The analyzed objects are characterized by the set of personal characteristics (education, age, etc.). We evaluate strength of the influence of this attributes onto the various parts of the incomes distributions. By decomposing the inequalities into the explained and unexplained components we get information about their causes.

The analysis will base on the data collected by the Household Budget Survey (HBS) for Poland in 2012.