Gender Differences in Commute and the Gender Reservation Wage Gap

L'axe Discriminations et inégalités sociales du LIEPP a le plaisir de vous inviter au séminaire : 

"Gender Differences in Commute and the Gender Reservation Wage Gap"

Avec Roland Rathelot

Mercredi 20 mars 2019, 12h30 - 14h00

Salle LIEPP

254 boulevard Saint-Germain, 75007 Paris

Inscription

Présentation :

  Roland Rathelot 

  Université de Warwick

We document how gender differences in commuting distances widen over the lifecycle following a similar pattern as the gender wage gap. We relate these stylized facts to supply side considerations, using a unique administrative dataset where we can match job seekers’ search criteria - reservation wage, maximum commute, working hours, etc - to the precise characteristics of the jobs preceding and following their unemployment spell. We document that, controlling finely for the previous job, unemployed women have a lower reservation wage than men and search for jobs closer to their residence. This translates into women getting lower wages and lower commutes upon reemployment. We observe similar gender gaps in wage and commuting for job to-job transitions. We then show that females have steeper indifference curves between wage and commute. We find that female workers do not receive less demand from far-away employers, suggesting that most of our stylized facts are supply-side driven. Through the lens a job search model where commuting matters, we estimate that up to 70% of the gender reservation wage gap can be accounted by gender differences in the maximum accepted commute.

Discutante: 

 Doctorante OSC