The gender pay gap narrows
Statistics Iceland’s analysis on the gender pay gap, in cooperation with an action group on equal pay appointed by the government and the social partners, shows a narrowing gender pay gap during the period 2008-2016.
The adjusted gender pay gap measured 6.6% in 2008 but was down to 4.5% in 2016 using an ordinary least squares method for each year. By using the whole dataset a less biased estimate can be decomposed into explained and unexplained parts. The unexplained part of the pay difference was estimated to be 4.8% for the years 2008-2016 while the explained part was 7.4%. The explained part reflects what is explained by the model in the analysis while the unexplained is what the model cannot explain.
If the whole period is broken into three-year periods the unexplained part of the gender pay gap has decreased from 4.8% in the years 2008-2010 to 3.6% in the years 2014-2016.