Estimates of the Impact of Labour Market Attachment and Attitudes on the Female Wage

This paper estimates the returns to full-time and part-time experience and the impact of career interruptions on the female wage using detailed labour market history data from the British Household Panel Survey, 1991–97. We show that the effect of time out of the labour market varies across activity undertaken while out, gender and degree of male occupational domination. Estimates of the unexplained portion of the gender wage differential are shown to reduce by almost 40 per cent when these detailed measures of labour market experience are used. Finally, we show that labour market attitudes have a significant impact on the female wage.