Shahina Amin1, Shakil Quayes2, Imam Alam1
(1. University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, IA 50614-0129, USA;

2. University of Massachusetts Lowell, Lowell, MA 01854, USA)

 

Abstract: Using the Household Expenditure Survey (1995) and the Labor Force Survey (2000) of Bangladesh, we utilize Blinder-Oaxaca and Juhn-Murphy-Pierce decomposition methods, to investigate gender disparity in earnings in the urban labor market in Bangladesh. Although part of the observed gender disparity is explained by education differentials, a substantial portion of the unexplained gap can be attributed to gender discrimination. The gender disparity narrows as we move from lower income to higher income strata but we also observe that this gap widened between the years 1995 and 2000. Our results are robust to the choice of decomposition technique.

 

Key words: Bangladesh; gender earnings gap; discrimination; labor markets

JEL codes: J31, J7, O15, O530