This article investigates the degree of heterogeneity in the gender pay gap across different quantiles of the unconditional wage distribution in Serbia during a recent period of economic uncertainty.
Using Labour Force Surveys data spanning the COVID-19 period between 2019 and 2022, this study investigates the gender pay gap using an extension of the Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition methodology that exploits recentered influence function regressions and incorporates a reweighting procedure to identify the pure treatment effect (see Firpo et al., 2009, 2018). The use of such a reweighting procedure ensures that the treatment effect is not influenced or confounded by differences in the distribution of observable characteristics between gender groups.
Our results reveal a stronger “glass-ceiling” than “sticky-floor” effect. Although women within the higher percentiles of the wage distribution exhibit the greatest advantage relative to men in terms of their pay-determining characteristics, a large unequal treatment in the wages received for the same set of characteristics as men persists. However, this unequal treatment remains stable across the time period studied, suggesting no lasting adverse legacy of the COVID-19 pandemic.
We use a novel methodology that enables an analysis of the gender pay gap along the unconditional wage distribution both before and after the recent COVID-19 period. Few studies have accounted for the changes in the wage differential using the methodology applied in this article, and none have examined the recent COVID-19 pandemic period using this approach.
