A Distributional Approach for Measuring Wage Discrimination and Occupational Discrimination Separately

The well-known Blinder–Oaxaca [Blinder, J. Hum. Resour. 8(4), 436–455 (1973); Oaxaca, Int. Econ. Rev. 14(3), 693–709 (1973)] decomposition divides the wage differential between men and women into a part, which can be explained by differences in individual characteristics, and another part, which is usually interpreted as discrimination. This decomposition neglects any distributional issues in evaluating discrimination, thus permitting undesirable compensation between positively and negatively discriminated women. Jenkins [J. Econ. 61(1), 81–102 (1994)] has criticized this aspect, instead, preferring a distributional approach, where the entire distribution of experienced discrimination is ev…