Does the gender wage gap exist among male and female workers with similar human capital? A Coarsened Exact Matching for Chile between 1992 and 2009

By:	Dusan Paredes (IDEAR - Department of Economics, Universidad Católica del Norte - Chile)
URL:	http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cat:dtecon:dt201205&r=lam
This paper estimates the gender wage gap for Chile between 1992-2009, but using by first time a matching comparison. In order to contribute to the empirical literature, this paper uses a novel technique called Coarsened Exact Matching which imposes the comparison among comparable workers. The results suggest that the wage gap exists, but it is lower than previous estimations, specially when only comparable workers are considered. This result opens the discussion about how well estimated is the gap when exist a high heterogeneity between male and female workers. The results also show a increment in wage gap from 2000. Finally, only the 58% of comparable male workers earns more wage than similar females workers. However, this 58% presents larger differential than its comparable 42% of female workers. This differential is also growing during the last years.
Keywords:	Gender wage gap, matching comparison, Coarsened Exact Matching