The Evolution of the Gender Earnings Gap Amongst Canadian University
Graduates
by Ross Finnie and Ted Wannell
Business and Labour Market Analysis Division
Analytical Studies Branch research paper series, No. 235
Context
While we know a good deal about the gender earnings gap in Canada (as
elsewhere) and how it varies across workers of different ages (and types),
we know much less regarding precisely how the gap evolves over the life
cycle for given cohorts of workers or how these dynamics have been shifting
over time.
Objectives
The contribution of this paper is to report the findings of an empirical
analysis of the gender earnings gap amongst Canadian Bachelor's
level university graduates over the first five years following graduation
and to compare these dynamics for three separate cohorts of recent graduates.
The work is based on three waves of the recently available National
Graduates Surveys (NGS) databases, which comprise individuals who successfully
completed their programmes at Canadian universities in 1982, 1986, and
1990, with the data gathered during interviews conducted two and five
years after graduation for each group of graduates.
Findings
There was a substantial narrowing of the overall gender earnings gap
across cohorts—the result of increases in female graduates'
earnings and decreases in males’ earnings—but the narrowing
was much greater two years following graduation than five years out,
as men's earnings grew considerably more strongly than women's
over this interval, even for the later groups of graduates.
A large part of the gender earnings gap at each interview date, and
much of the increase in the overall earnings gap from two to five years
following graduation, appears to have been of a generalised nature,
unrelated to specific job characteristics, experience profiles, or individual
attributes. At the same time, much of the narrowing of the gap across
cohorts has been of a similarly general nature.
There was an increase in the relative and absolute importance of the
explained portion of the gender gap over time for a given cohort, and
a pronounced decrease in the unexplained differences (Beta effects)
in each later cohort, being zero or near-zero for the latest group of
graduates, thus indicating gender neutrality (or near to it) in the
returns to various factors in the labour market.
As for more specific influences, hours of work was an important determinant
of the earnings gap at each point in time, as well as of its increase
in the years following graduation.
Other factors, such as past work experience, specific job characteristics,
family status, and province of residence and language spoken, have played
only smaller and generally more mixed roles in the gender gap amongst
these Bachelor's graduates.
Data sources: National Graduates Survey (and Follow-up)
(1982, 1986, 1990).
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