Gender and urban - rural pay gap in Mekong Delta

Abstract

This study analyzes the wage differential of male
and female workers, and labor in urban and rural areas in
the Mekong Delta provinces using the VHLSS 2014 data.
The results of the decomposition of the wage disparity
between men and women show unexplained difference has
the major contribution in the wage gap between men and
women, in particular the differences in the returns to
academic and professional degrees for male and female
workers. Meanwhile, the explained difference has lower
explanatory power, suggesting that most of attributes of
male and female labor do not significantly differ. The
results of the decomposition of urban-rural wage
differential show the opposite: the difference is mainly due
to the fact that urban workers are more educated than
rural labor, while the unexplained difference has lower
explanatory power. Based on these results, the paper
proposes a number of recommendations to reduce the
income gap in the Mekong Delta