Date of Award
1-1-2021
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Ph.D. in Economics
First Advisor
Natalia Kolesnikova
Second Advisor
John Gardner
Third Advisor
Thomas Garrett
Relational Format
dissertation/thesis
Abstract
The first chapter examines how women's local labor supply decisions affect the national gender wage gap. The national wage is the sum of weighted local wages, which combines local wages and local employment weights. Here, I emphasize the role of local employment weights, especially for women, which can reflect worker's labor supply decisions across locations. I show that, only for highly-educated women, there is a significant negative relationship between employment-to-population ratio and average log wage across locations. This relationship is stronger for married women with children. Since fewer highly-educated women are working in high-wage cities while more highly-educated women are working in low-wage cities (i.e. different employment weights), I argue that the national-level gender wage gap would be overstated. To test this hypothesis, I use two empirical strategies. First, I conduct a counterfactual gender wage gap analysis by replacing women's local employment weights with men's and show that the log wage difference between men and women with an advanced degree can be reduced by 2 percent. Second, I estimate the college-educated gender wage gap with location controls, which is 5 percent less than the gap without location controls.
Recommended Citation
Park, Hyerim, "Essays on Female Labor Supply" (2021). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 2040.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/2040