The gender pay gap in university student employment

Abstract

Gender pay gaps are commonly studied in populations with already completed educational careers. We focus on an earlier stage by investigating the gender pay gap among university students working alongside their studies. With data from five cohorts of a large-scale student survey from Germany, we use regression and wage decomposition techniques to describe gender pay gaps and potential explanations. We find that female students earn about 6% less on average than male students, which reduces to 4.1% when accounting for a rich set of explanatory variables. The largest explanatory factor is the type of jobs male and female students pursue.

Optimistic About the Future: How Job and Study Resources Facilitate Career Optimism in Working Students

“…For instance, older students have lower career optimism than their younger counterparts (Levpušček et al, 2018), and while role resources have not been examined as a correlate, older students tend to experience more job demands (Creed, Hood, Bialocerkowski, et al, CAREER OPTIMISM IN WORKING STUDENTS 12 2022). Male students have more access to career-related job resources (i.e., work-study role congruence; Boll et al, 2022) and higher career optimism than their female counterparts (Lin et al, 2022). A longitudinal study showed that financial stress negatively predicted career optimism in emerging adults (Wake & O'Donnell, 2024).…”

Gender Pay Gap in the Slovak Labour Market

“…Also, the gender pay gap has fallen if semi-parametric matching estimator was used. Boll et al (2022) bring new perspective on the gender pay gap as their research focuses on the gender pay gap among working university students instead of workers with already finished studies. In their study, they used wage decomposition techniques and found that, in an unadjusted form, female students earn on average 6% less than their counterparts.…”