The UK gender pay gap: does firm size matter?

Jones, Melanie ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0535-8090 and Kaya, Ezgi ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1909-2649 2022. The UK gender pay gap: does firm size matter? [Discussion Paper]. GLO Discussion Paper, vol. 1149. Global Labor Organization. Available at: https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/glodps/1149.html

Full text not available from this repository.

Abstract

Motivated by the introduction of the UK Gender Pay Gap Reporting legislation to large firms, defined as over 250 employees, we use linked employee-employer panel data from the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings to explore pre-legislation variation in the gender pay gap by firm size. In doing so, we integrate two prominent but distinct empirical regularities in the labour economics literature, namely the gender pay gap and firm-size wage premium. We find evidence of both a larger raw and unexplained gender pay gap among large relative to smaller firms in the UK private sector even after controlling for unobserved worker heterogeneity, consistent with the legislation being effectively targeted. However, this conclusion changes after accounting for unobserved firm level heterogeneity and focusing on within-firm gender pay gaps. Large firms have smaller within-firm raw gender pay gaps and similar unexplained gender pay gaps when compared to smaller firms. We find that this conclusion is not specific to the current firm size threshold of 250 employees but holds more generally, including at proposed extensions of the legislation to smaller firms.

Item Type:	Monograph (Discussion Paper)
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Business (Including Economics)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory
Additional Information:	GLO Discussion Paper, No. 1149
Publisher:	Global Labor Organization
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	30 August 2022
Last Modified:	10 Nov 2022 11:53
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/152192

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item