Gender Gap Decomposition
Gender gap decomposition, most often implemented as the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition, splits the mean difference in an outcome such as wages between men and women into a part explained by differences in measured characteristics (education, experience, occupation) and an unexplained residual part attributed to differences in how those characteristics are rewarded. Introduced independently by Ronald Oaxaca and Alan Blinder in 1973, it is the workhorse method for quantifying how much of the gender pay gap reflects composition versus differential treatment.
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Sources
- Oaxaca, R. (1973). Male-female wage differentials in urban labor markets. International Economic Review, 14(3), 693–709. DOI: 10.2307/2525981 ↗
- Blinder, A. S. (1973). Wage discrimination: Reduced form and structural estimates. Journal of Human Resources, 8(4), 436–455. DOI: 10.2307/144855 ↗
- Jann, B. (2008). The Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition for linear regression models. The Stata Journal, 8(4), 453–479. DOI: 10.1177/1536867X0800800401 ↗
How to cite this page
ScholarGate. (2026, June 22). Oaxaca-Blinder Decomposition of the Gender Wage Gap. ScholarGate. https://scholargate.app/en/gender-studies/gender-gap-decomposition
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