Content area
Abstract
In this dissertation, I use data from Taiwan's 1979–95 Manpower Utilization Surveys to examine the impact on earnings of two factors: education and gender. The last two decades have seen a rapid increase in the average educational attainment of the population of Taiwan. In Chapter 1, I examine the effects of educational expansion on Taiwan's wage structure. I find that in younger cohorts, university graduates have seen a decline in their earnings premium relative to nonuniversity graduates. I conclude that under reasonable assumptions, this decline may be attributed to changes in the relative sizes of education-level groups.
In Chapter 2, I focus on the female-male gender gap in earnings in Taiwan. Despite gains made by women in measured human capital, this gap has remained nearly constant over time. I perform a traditional decomposition analysis of the gap into explained and unexplained portions, and find that the unexplained portion has increased substantially over time. I also examine how changes in the overall level of inequality in the economy have contributed to the stability of the gap, and look at whether the increased relative supply of female workers in Taiwan in recent years can account for their unchanged relative earnings in the face of increasing relative skills. I find little evidence that women are not treated as substitutes for men in production, but suggestive evidence that discrimination depresses women's earnings.
Research in the U.S. shows that sex differences in college major explain a substantial portion of the U.S. gender gap, and that shifts toward a more equal sex composition in choice of major have decreased that gap. In Chapter 3, I examine whether the same is true in Taiwan. I find that the composition of degree types has shifted rapidly over the 1979–95 period, and that the type of degree a person receives may be as important to earnings as his or her education level. However, degree type has a more substantial impact on earnings for men than for women. I find that degree type may explain part of the gender gap in earnings for university graduates in Taiwan.
