Age-productivity patterns in talent occupations for men and women: a decomposition

One could expect that in the so-called talent occupations, while access to these professions may differ between men and women, the gender wage gap should actually be smaller owing to the high relevance of human capital quality. Wage regressions typically suggest an inverted U-shaped age–productivity pattern. However, such analyses confuse age, cohort and year effects. Deaton decomposition allows us to disentangle these effects. We apply this method to investigate the age–productivity pattern for the so-called ‘talent’ occupations. Using data from a transition economy (Poland) we find that talent occupations indeed have a steeper age–productivity pattern. However, gender differences are larger for talent occupations than for general occupations.