{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.015197568389057751, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0, 'mean_word_length': 5.0691244239631335, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Wage Responses to Gender Pay Gap Reporting Requirements

In the face of a stubbornly persistent gap between male and female wages, governments worldwide are considering a range of policies. In this paper I study one such policy, in which firms are required to publicly report gender pay gap statistics. Proponents argue that increasing the information available to workers and consumers pressures firms to take responsibility for pay gaps and ultimately close them, but opponents argue that such policies are poorly targeted and hence ineffective. This paper contributes to this debate by analyzing the UK’s recent reporting policy in which employers are mandated to publicly report simple measures of their gender pay gap each year. Exploiting a discontinuous size threshold in the policy’s coverage, I apply a difference-in-difference strategy to linked employer-employee data. I find that the introduction of reporting requirements led to a two percentage point narrowing of the gender pay gap in affected firms. This large effect is due to an increase in female workers’ wages and a fall in male workers’ wages rather than a change in the composition of affected organizations. The effect is driven by higher-earning workers towards the start of their careers and not covered by collective bargaining agreements.