Does The Gender Wage Gap Still Exist in Thailand? An Analysis of Regional and Public-Private Sector Differences

Abstract

The gender wage gap has steadily fallen in Thailand over the past thirty years. Although the falling trend has been recognized in previous research (Nakavachara 2010), the regional differences in the gender wage gap and the role of employment sector in explaining the gender wage gap have not been sufficiently explored. This paper utilizes data from the 2001 to 2015 Thai Labor Force Surveys (LFS), collected by the Thai National Statistical Office (NSO), to identify gender wage gap trends across Thailand’s five regions and across the public and private sectors. The results show that the gender wage gap has declined across all five regions, although there is regional variation in the magnitude of the wage gap. Analysis of the wage gap across employment sectors indicates that the there is little wage gap in the public sector, while the wage gaps in the private sector are large but declining across all regions over time. Furthermore, analysis using a Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition indicates that the unexplained portion of the wage gap in the private sector has declined significantly across all regions, suggesting that Thai women are possibly facing less wage discrimination over time.