Ruiz-Valenzuela, JeniferYang, Rui2022-10-182022-10-182022https://hdl.handle.net/2445/189990Treballs Finals del Màster d'Economia Laboral / Labour Economics, Facultat d'Economia i Empresa, Universitat de Barcelona. Curs: 2021-2022. Tutor: Jenifer Ruiz-ValenzuelaThis paper uses the 2018–2020 U.S. Census and American Community Survey microdata to examine the extent to which gender differences in graduates' choice of degree fields - STEM or Non-STEM contribute to the gender pay gap in the United States. With the Blinder-Oaxaca wage decomposition method, this paper finds that among the highly-educated labor force in the U.S. for the period 2018-2020, the individual background characteristics (race, region), family characteristics (marital status, number of children), education-related characteristics (degree fields, the highest educational attainment, and school type), and job-related characteristics (hours worked, work experience, job sector, and occupation type) combined can explain 55.96% of the gender pay gap. Among them, whether an individual chooses a college major related to a STEM field (ie. whether or not to obtain a degree in a STEM field) contributes 2.4%-5.2% of the "explanatory part", and can only explain 1.35%-2.91% of the gender pay gap. Finally, the results of this study showed that, although the content of the field of study (STEM/Non-STEM) seems not to explain too much of the current gender wage gap in the U.S. highly-educated workforce, it is hard to deny that educational segregation is still a barrier to gender equality. In addition, this paper also found that the gender pay gap for STEM graduates is 3.77% smaller than the gender pay gap for Non-STEM graduates. What's more, the choice of degree subjects can explain 9.91% of the gender gap for STEM graduate samples.70 p.application/pdfengcc-by-nc-nd (c) Yang, 2022http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/es/Mercat de treballEstudis de gènereIntegració escolarTreballs de fi de màsterLabor marketGender studiesSchool integrationMaster's thesesinfo:eu-repo/semantics/masterThesisinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess