A new approach to gender wage gaps in Chile

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine gender wage gaps in Chileusing a new database, the Social Protection Survey (EPS); 2002-2006,which makes it possible to control for actual work experience and itstiming. Potential work experience variables do not reflect the intermittentand discontinuous participation of women in the Chilean labour market.Corrections are also introduced for occupational selection, and two keyvariables are instrumented: education and work experience. Although thereare still wage differences between men and women, the introduction ofcontrols for actual work experience and the instrumentation of this workexperience and education bring the hourly wage gap down to some 11%to 18%, figures much lower than those reported in earlier studies for Chile.Contrary to expectations, this gap has widened in recent years.