Are Women Really Paid More than Men in Kosovo? Unpicking the Evidence

Abstract

A recent survey found that the unadjusted average hourly net wage rate of female employees in Kosovo exceeded that of male employees. This reverse gender wage gap makes Kosovo a curiosity, though results from other countries suggest that there is an inverse relationship between the size of the gender pay gap in a country and its female labour force participation rate. In the analysis below we estimate earning functions for female and male employees in Kosovo. Using decomposition analyses we then examine the size of the explained and unexplained gender wage gaps. A novel feature of the investigation is that we incorporate into the analysis gender differences in the allocation of time. We find that the superior productivity-related characteristics of female employees in Kosovo hides the magnitude of the difficulties they still face in the labour market. Hence, we conclude that once we focus on workers with similar observed productivity-related characteristics, women in Kosovo are paid significantly less than men.

Estimating the returns to education in a chronically depressed labour market: the case of Kosovo

“…The participation rate in Kosovo at around 40% compares with an EU27 average of 74% for the population aged 15–64, whilst the employment rate in Kosovo, at just 28%, approximates more closely to that found in many African economies rather than the 70% average rate of the EU27. In addition, the labour market in Kosovo has a high incidence of informal employment (World Bank and Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, 2020; Kosovo Government, 2021) and large persisting gender gaps (Gashi et al , 2019; Gashi and Adnett, 2020). Taken together these indicators and their persistence over time, suggest that the Kosovan labour market is chronically depressed, as such this means that the conventional approach to estimating the private returns to schooling may need revising.…”