Volume 36, Number 1 (Winter) 2001
Antecol, Heather. 2001. "Why Is There Interethnic Variation in the Gender Wage Gap? The Role of Cultural Factors." Journal of Human Resources 36(1):119-143.
This paper analyzes interethnic variation in the gender wage gap among immigrants in the United States. Controlling for human capital factors does not eliminate interethnic variation in the gender wage gap. Moreover, a positive correlation exists between the gender wage gaps of first generation immigrants and the same gaps in those groups' countries of origin. Although I cannot detect a home country effect for second-and-higher generation immigrants, the pattern for the first generation gap is consistent with a role for cultural factors, in addition to human capital and institutional factors, in explaining why some women earn more relative to men than others.
Heather Antecol is an assistant professor at Illinois State University. The author would like to thank the Canadian International Labour Network (CILN) for financial support. CILN receives major funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and McMaster University. Abdurrahman Aydemir, Martin Browning, John Burbidge, Thomas Crossley, Peter Kuhn, Lonnie Magee, Rati Ram, Daniel Rich, Arthur Sweetman, and two anonymous referees provided helpful comments. The data used in this article can be obtained beginning [June 2001 through May 2004.] from Heather Antecol, Department of Economics, Illinois State University, Campus Box 4200, Normal, Illinois 61790.
© 2002 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
US ISSN 0022-166X