The double “discrimination” of foreign women: A matching comparisons approach

This paper explores the evolution of wage gaps in Italy by gender and citizenship. Using Labour Force Survey (LFS) data over the period 2009-2020 we apply two different matching comparison methodologies, the Ñopo decomposition and the Inverse Probability Weighted Regression Adjustment (IPWRA) technique, that allow “like for like” comparisons between individuals and are able to take into account how gender interacts with citizenship in shaping wages. Our findings show that the general gender wage gap in Italy is rather low This gap is largely explained by workers’ observable characteristics. Conversely, the citizenship wage gap appears to be much larger, Moreover, most of the reported wage gaps seem to be explained by unobservable characteristics. We finally estimate the double-negative effect of being both a woman and a foreigner. Non-Italian women earned on average 44.3% per hour less than Italian men in 2009 and 46.5% less than Italian men in 2020