Wage discrimination against women in baltic countries

Abstract

The paper is devoted on the wage differences between men and women in Baltic countries. It aims to estimate the unexplained gender pay gap cleaned at least partially by effect of intra household specialization on wage. To estimate the unexplained gender pay gap, we use European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) data and apply the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition accompanied by matching procedure. The results show that to take intra-household specialization into account led to a decrease in the unexplained gender wage differences however wage differences between men and women per-sists. The unexplained gender pay gap, which could be due to wage discrimination against women reaches approximately 11 percent in Latvia and Lithuania. It is significantly higher in Estonia where it amounts about 21 percent to disadvantage of women.