Investigating the gender wage gap in Vietnam by quantile regression: sticky floor or glass ceiling

Abstract

Inequality between men and women in the labour market is one of the issues that are of great interest in labour economics. The sticky floor effect occurs when the gender wage gap widen at the lower tail of the wage distribution. The glass ceiling effect in wage existed if the gender wage gap at the top of the wage distribution is wider than other position. This study uses the dataset of VHLSS 2014 to investigate the existence of glass ceiling and sticky floor on the Vietnam labour market by using quantile regression. The overall results on entire sample show that there is sticky floor effect but no glass ceiling in Vietnam labor market. However, the results are different when analyzing in detail on each labor group. In terms of urban and rural areas, the sticky floor exists in both regions, but the glass ceiling exists only in rural areas. In terms of state and private sectors, the glass ceiling exists in both sectors, while the stick floor is only present in the private sector.