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

Abstract

The study aims to achieve the objectives: investigate the existence of glass ceiling and sticky floor on Vietnam‟s labour market; investigate the floor stickiness and glass ceiling effects by groups which formed by living areas (urban – rural), by sectors (state - private), by education and by occupations. This study uses the dataset of VHLSS 2014 to accomplish the research objectives. The VHLSS dataset collects information on a sample of households and communes that serves to assess the living standards across the country and regions. This includes the objective of assessing poverty and the economic inequality. The VHLSS survey consists of households, household members and communes in all provinces/cities. The VHLSS sampling method is implemented through the consultancy and supervision of the National Institute of Statistical Sciences, UNDP and the World Bank, to ensure representative representation of the sample selected for the overall study. The overall results on whole sample show that there is sticky floor effect but no glass ceiling in Vietnam labour market. However, the results are different when analyzing in detail on each labour group: in terms of urban and rural areas, the sticky floor exists but the glass ceiling does not only in both areas; in terms of state and private sectors, the glass ceiling only exists in state sector, while the stick floor only present in the private sector; in terms of educational levels, the sticky floor exists in groups of primary, secondary, high school and vocational level. The glass ceiling exists in the bachelor group. in terms of occupations, the glass ceiling occurs in the average level expert and operation worker groups. Meanwhile, the sticky floor is found in the wages of manual workers.