Purpose The purpose of this paper is to get deeper insight into the measurement of gender wage gap. A proper method to identify which part of gender wage differences is due to discrimination against women is provided, and the relationship between wage differences and education is studied. Design/methodology/approach The stochastic frontier approach is employed to measure wage discrimination against women by using Spanish data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions. Mentioned technique allows the authors to split the gender wage gap of workers displaying the same characteristics into two components: the first measures inefficiency in the job search process caused by imperfect information or gender differences concerning preferences regarding working conditions, where as the second takes account of discrimination. Findings A significant level of discrimination is found in the Spanish labour market at all educational levels, but this problem is quantitatively more important when low-educated workers are studied, and gender discrimination is lower for highly educated women. Originality/value In this paper, workers’ potential wage is estimated, and gender discrimination is measured by the gender potential wage gap, since it is not dependent on other wage determinants such as diverse preferences, unmeasured working abilities or imperfect information.

This paper investigates the effects of different dimensions of social capital ​on happiness of Europeans. Unlike other studies, a categorical principal component analysis (CATPCA) is applied to obtain the dimensions of social capital. The data used come from the ninth wave of the European Social Survey (ESS), year 2018. Happiness is modelled using a multilevel structural equations model (GSEM) by country to study the role of social capital in Europeans' happiness, when controlling for the effect of factors such as gender, unemployment, age, low income, higher education, and living with a partner. Social capital is measured as a multidimensional concept composed of institutional trust, social trust, social ties and voluntary association, civility and sense of belonging, and religiosity. Among the results, we found that the five dimensions that build social capital have a positive impact on happiness. In addition to the positive effects of social capital, the control variables have the expected impact. In a context marked by growing individualism and social isolation, the results of this work can guide policy makers in using the dimensions of social capital to increase the subjective well-being of the population.

No abstract

The European population is aging and their declining capacity makes older Europeans more dependent on the availability of care. Male and female health needs at older ages are different, yet there are contradictory results on the study of gender inequalities in health among the older European population. The aim of this article is twofold: first, we study whether there is a general gender health gap at older ages across Europe. Secondly, we analyze the existence of an increasing or decreasing universal association between the gender health gap and age among the older European population or whether, by contrast, this depends on the type of welfare state. To achieve these goals, we use data from the Survey on Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) for respondents aged 50 and over in 2015, and we carry out several multilevel random intercept logistic regressions for European countries. Our results show that when we split European countries into groups according to the type of welfare state, we only find a significant gender health gap in older people in Southern and Social Democratic countries. Some differences have been found in the links between the gender health gap and age among European countries. Old women report worse health than men at all ages in Southern countries while in Social Democratic states it is only true for women aged 80 and over. In Bismarckian states there are barely any gender differences, while the gender health gap has no clearly defined bias. Between the ages of 60 and 79, men from Eastern European countries report poorer health, while after 80 it is women who report poorer health. In general, we found the widest gender inequalities in health for the oldest population group, especially in Southern and Eastern European countries.

In this paper we will empirically contrast the effects of globalization on growth and employment, since a large number of works, from the late 1980s to the present, have emphasized that globalization has influenced such rates, increasing growth for the Orthodox, or decreasing it and increasing the rate of unemployment for the post-Keynesians. We have contrasted these hypotheses indirectly, through the application of unit root tests with changes in the mean. The results confirm that the growth and unemployment rates have undergone changes in their long-term values, but there have been other types of disturbances, and not globalization, the causes.