By Ross Finnie and Ted Wannell
Statistics Canada

Abstract

This paper reports the results of an empirical analysis of the gender earnings gap amongst recent Canadian Bachelor’s level university graduates. The overall gap, as of two years leaving university, narrowed significantly across successive cohorts of graduates, but widened significantly from two to five years after graduation for all groups. Differences in the exogenous variables “explain” from about 40 percent to essentially the entire gap across the different periods, this portion rising from two to five years out and across cohorts. By the final group, all of the gap is thus “explained” at the two-year point in time, and most of it is explained at the five-year mark, with labour market returns (measured in this manner) largely gender-neutral for the last group of graduates. Hours of work are the single most important influence, while past work experience, job characteristics, family status, province of residence, and language have smaller and more mixed effects.

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