Gender, age and migration: an intersectional approach to inequalities in the labour market

This paper analyses the interference of three socio-demographic characteristics: gender, age and migration status on the labour market outcomes from the perspective of intersectionality theory. Concretely, we investigate whether gender and migration differences in hourly wages are observable at younger ages and whether these differences increase with age. Further, we analyse whether gender and migration interact in such a way that women with migration background suffer lower wage growth in relation to their counterparts. Our analyses draw on data from the Socio-Economic Panel (German SOEP from 1991 to 2014), distinguishing between populations with and without a migration background. Random effects hourly wage regressions controlling for selection bias using Heckman procedure have been estimated in our analysis. The results show that there are large gender differences in hourly wage at younger ages, and these differences are maintained over the life course. Regarding migration status, no significant disadvantages in wages are observable at early stages. However, disadvantages of men and women with migration background increase with age, resulting in lower earnings for older workers with migration background. When we analyse the interaction between migration and gender, we observe no effect either at younger ages or over the entire lifespan, indicating that the gender disadvantage is no more pronounced for women with migration background than for women without such a background (and vice versa).