Gender Wage Differentials Among Highly Educated in Urban India

This study aims to answer two questions. First, whether highly educated women face a wage penalty compared to their men counterparts in urban India? Second, if there exists a gender wage penalty, then what has happened to its size over time? We use the unit level employment-unemployment data of the National Sample Survey (NSS) for two rounds: 2004-05 and 2011-12 and employ the Neuman and Oaxaca (2004) method to estimate the average wage gap accounting for selection bias. We find that the highly educated men in urban India earn about 30% more than their women counterparts, and there is a marginal decline in the gender wage gap between 2004-05 and 2011-12. The gender wage gap scenario is worse in the 'post-graduate and above' sample than in the 'graduate' sample. In the 'graduate' sample, the wage gap declined between 2004-05 and 2011-12, whereas the gap increased in the 'post-graduate and above' sample. Though the gender wage gap among the highly educated as a whole has declined in urban India, the magnitude of the gap is still sizable.