An analysis of the gender wage gap in Peru in the formal and informal sectors

Abstract

Unlike previous studies on gender gaps, this research analyzes wage gaps within the Peruvian labor market considering its segmentation between informal and formal and a sub-segmentation between public and private, generating 4 segments in the labor market. For this purpose, we apply decomposition methods for mean wage and along the wage distribution. The main findings are the following: first, in the informal segment there are wide wage gaps in the upper and lower ends of the distribution against women with a greater emphasis on the informal public segment, and in the informal private segment we found a negative wage gap against women but constant along the distribution. Then, in the formal segment (public and private) the largest gaps were found at the upper end of the distribution, a result that is in line with the "glass ceiling" effect found by the international literature.