A few days ago, this study of gender pay differences for Uber drivers came out. The key finding, that women earned 7% less than men, was stunning because Uber uses a gender-blind algorithm. The figure below was the most interesting one from the study as it summarized the differences in pay quite well.

To explain this, the authors highlight a few explanations borne out by the data: men drive faster allowing them to have more clients; men have spent more time working for Uber and have more experience that may be unobserved; choices of where and when to drive matters. It is this latter point that I find fascinating because it speaks to an issue that I keep underlining regarding pay gaps when I teach.

For reasons that may be sociological or biological (I am agnostic on that), men tend to occupy jobs that have high rates of occupational mortality (see notably this British study on the topic) in the forms of accidents (think construction, firemen) or diseases (think miners and trashmen). They also tend to take the jobs in further removed areas in order to gain access to a distance premium (which is a form of risk in the sense that it affects  family life etc.). The premiums to taking risky jobs are well documented (see notably the work of Kip Viscusi who measured the wage premium accruing to workers who were employed in bars where smoking was permitted). If these premiums are non-negligible but tend to be preferred by men (who are willing to incur the risk to be injured or fall sick), then risk preferences matter to the gender wage gap.

However, there are hard to properly measure in order to assess the share of the wage gap truly explained by discrimination. Here with the case of Uber, we can get an idea of the amplitude of the differences. Male Uber drivers prefer riskier hours (more risks of having an inebriated and potentially aggressive client), riskier places (high traffic with more risks of accidents) and riskier behavior (driving faster to get more clients per hour).  The return to taking these risks is greater earnings. According to the study, 20% of the gap stems from this series of choices or roughly 1.4 percentage points.

I think that this is significantly large to warrant further consideration in the future in the debate. More often than not, the emphasis is on education, experience, marital status, and industry codes (NAICS code) to explain wage differences. The use of industry codes has never convinced me. There is wide variance within industries regarding work accidents and diseases. The NAICS codes industries by wide sectors and then by sub-sectors of activities (see for example the six-digits codes to agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting here). This does not allow to take account of the risks associated with a job. There are a few study that try to account for this problem, but there are … well … few in numbers. And rarely are they considered in public discussions.

Here, the Uber case shows the necessity to bring back this subtopic in order to properly explain the wage gap.