EDUCATION AND WAGES ACCORDING TO REGION, AGE AND GENDER. THE ARGENTINIAN CASE

Abstract

This work focuses on estimating the Mincer salary equation by segregating the labor market according to the level of instruction, gender, experience and region in order to explain the wage differences and therefore, the inequality. Moreover, it is also desired to find a correlation between the economic cycle and the real wages, tendencies for each variable and the evolution of the Gini index. The econometric model is estimated by minimum ordinary squares method due to the database number of observations show the characteristics needed to find a coherent and correct output. Dummy variables are used and the age is a proxy variable for the experience. The database was obtained from the "Encuesta Permanente de Hogares" (Permanent home statistics) gathered by argentine’s INDEC (National Institute of statistics).The main econometric objective is to find a statistic significance of each variable and their relation between the economic cycle. Besides, the economic objective is to analyze the data and bring conclusions about the wage level for each region, the gender gap and specially the relevance of education showed by the levels of instruction. As a conclusion it was found that education is an extremely determinant factor of salaries and income. Also it was found that between regions in Argentina there are significant differences in wages, moving far from Buenos Aires means lower wages. Regarding the gender gap, it is clear that females earn less, but young females suffer a greater inequality.