“The Gender Gap in Early Career in Mongolia”

Purpose of this paper. The paper studies the determinants of gender differences in early career in Mongolia, one of the fifty poorest countries of the world. Design/methodology/approach The analysis takes advantage of an ad hoc School to Work Survey (SWTS) on young people aged 15-29 years carried out in 2006. Extended and augmented Mincerian earning equations are run and then the Juhn, Murphy and Pierce (1993) decomposition method is applied to them to disentangle the quantity effect, the price effect and the residual wage distribution effect. Findings On average, female wages are not lower than those of males. However, although not statistically significant among teenagers (15-19), the conditional gender gap becomes significant and sizeable for the over-2020-29 year olds. The JMP decomposition shows that most of the gap is due to differences in the way the market values the same characteristics of men and women: in fact, quantity effects tend to reduce, whereas price effects tend to increase the gap. If wages were paid equally, women should have 11.7% more for their higher education attainment and overall 22% more, a substantial gap for the low earnings of Mongolians. Research limitations/implications Future research should assess the impact of aspirations of young people on their labour market choices. Practical implications The analysis shows that gender differences emerge in concomitance with women establishing a household and giving birth, suggesting that the current interventions to help mothers cope with maternity are insufficient. Changing this outcome is important to reach the Millennium Development Goals. What is original/value of paper Labour market issues in Mongolia are understudied, not to mention gender differences in early career.