Gender wage gap of migrant workers and its root causes: Gender discrimination or labor endowment?

Curbing the widening of the gender wage gap is a critical goal for countries around the world. This paper empirically examines the determinants of employment and wage of migrant workers, and investigates the gender wage gap and its root causes. The study shows that the employment and wage of female migrants are significantly lower than that of male over the period 2015-2020. The modified Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition demonstrates that the gender wage gap among migrant workers stems mainly from discrimination effect rather than endowment effect, indicating the existence of employment discrimination against females in labor market. In addition, the gender wage gap among migrant workers has been widening with the increase of their wage. The modified quantile decomposition reveals that the gender wage gap at different wage levels is primarily due to the discrimination effect, which is higher in the high-paid group. This study contributes to the literature on gender wage gap by developing the revised decomposition approach to identify discrimination effect and endowment effect.