The Comparison of Income Distributions for Women and Men in the European Union Countries

The purpose of this study was to compare personal income distributions in countries of the European Union, taking into account gender differences. Using data from the EU-SILC project, the gender income gap for 28 European countries was examined. First, we examined the income inequalities of men and women in each country using the Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition procedure. The unexplained part of the gender pay gap gave us information about the wage discrimination. Second, we extended the decomposition procedure to different quantile points along the whole income distribution. To construct the counterfactual distribution, we used the recentered influence function—regression approach. We found that there exists an important diversity in the size of the gender pay gap across members of the European Union. The results obtained for these countries allowed us to group them into four clusters using the agglomerative clustering algorithm. The results of decomposition were analyzed and compared across the formulated groups of countries.