Professor Mustafizur Rahman, Distinguished Fellow, CPD and Mr Md. Al-Hasan, Research Associate, CPD, recently published their journal article titled, “Male-Female Wage Gap and Informal Employment in Bangladesh: A quantile Regression Approach”. The article was published at The South Asia Economic Journal, Volume 20, Issue 1.
This article has made an attempt to undertake an in-depth and detailed investigation into the underlying factors driving the gender wage gap and wage discrimination in Bangladesh’s labour market. The analysis was done using the latest available Quarterly Labour Force Survey 2015-16 data.
The authors used the Quantile Regression Approach. This methodology has helped the authors take a deeper look into the wage discrimination at various deciles of the wage distribution.
On average, a woman in Bangladesh earns 12.2 per cent lower wage than a man. Women are subject to higher wage penalty at the lower deciles of the wage distribution. Formally employed female workers earn higher wage than their male counterparts at the first decile but suffer from wage penalty at the top deciles.
This article shows that a change in wage distribution in favour of women is possible if policymakers incentivise women’s access to formal jobs in greater numbers.
Click here to find the journal article.