Journal Press India^®

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This paper analyses determinants of wage in India using NSSO socio-economic survey 66^th round (July 2009-June 2010) data and Heckman two step regression procedure. On the basis of results, it attempts to find out the extent of gender discrimination and discrimination due to urban-rural divide applying Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition technique. Results show that socio-economic, demographic, location, and job attributes are significant determinants of wage in India. However, when cost of living index was added as a control along with others, urban-rural divide in wage became marginal (8%) and in decomposition most of the differentials in wage is due to the explained component. However, this study found that wage of an average male is 33.43% higher than wage of an average female, almost all due to unexplained factors indicating substantially high degree of wage discrimination in India even after discounting the role of omitted variables.   ​

Keywords

Wage determinants, Discrimination, Heckman two step procedure, Oaxaca-Blinder Decomposition

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