Compare methods

	Oaxaca-Blinder Decomposition	Kitagawa Decomposition
Field	Economics	Demography
Family	Regression model	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1973	1955
Originator	Ronald Oaxaca & Alan Blinder (independently)	Evelyn M. Kitagawa
Type	Regression-based decomposition of a mean outcome gap	Arithmetic decomposition of a difference between two summary rates
Seminal source	Oaxaca, R. (1973). Male-female wage differentials in urban labor markets. International Economic Review, 14(3), 693–709.	Kitagawa, E. M. (1955). Components of a difference between two rates. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 50(272), 1168–1194.
Aliases	Blinder-Oaxaca Decomposition, Wage Gap Decomposition, Threefold Decomposition, Detailed Decomposition	Components-of-difference method, Rate decomposition, Standardization decomposition, Kitagawa Ayrıştırması
Related	2	4
Summary	The Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition is a regression-based technique that splits the difference in a mean outcome between two groups — classically the average wage gap between men and women or between racial groups — into a part explained by differences in observable characteristics (endowments such as education and experience) and an unexplained part attributed to differences in how those characteristics are rewarded (the coefficients). Introduced independently by Ronald Oaxaca and Alan Blinder in 1973, it became the standard tool for studying wage discrimination and group disparities.	Kitagawa decomposition is a demographic technique that splits the difference between two summary rates — such as two crude death rates, birth rates, or prevalence figures — into the part attributable to differences in the underlying group-specific rates and the part attributable to differences in population composition. Introduced by Evelyn Kitagawa in 1955, it answers whether a gap between two populations reflects genuinely different risks or merely a different age (or other) structure.