We all know about the gender pay gap, but what about the urban-rural gap? Dr Sabine D’Costa tells us about her latest research in today’s Notebook
Cities no longer offer wage boost for women
The gender pay gap remains high, at 7.7 per cent for full-time workers in 2023, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Given the government’s emphasis on reducing it further, I recently explored in my research whether working in cities might boost women’s wages relative to men. Traditionally, urban women had outperformed rural women significantly more than urban men outperformed rural men in terms of wages. The larger urban wage premium for women was linked to better access to facilities such as childcare and public transport in cities that disproportionately benefited women and boosted urban women’s wages compared to those working in rural areas. This was good news for decreasing the gender pay gap on a national scale.
However, this study also shows that since the 2008 financial crisis this trend has completely changed, and urban women are not outperforming rural women more than urban men outperform rural men anymore. Now, for both genders, employees of the same age and working in similar jobs in the same industry earn only about one per cent more per hour in cities than in rural areas. This is largely because urban women’s wages are no longer disproportionately boosted by access to shared facilities in cities. This suggests the unaffordability or lower quality of childcare facilities and transport have meant that women in cities couldn’t benefit from these as much.
With the expansion of free childcare hours having just kicked in this month, nine-month-old children are now eligible for 15 hours of government-funded childcare per week. This could help reverse the trend, giving a boost to women’s wages in cities compared to those in rural jobs. In the national picture, this could lead to a reduction in the gender pay gap.
Escape to the country? It might come with a cost
The same research also reveals a worrying inequality. Women switching from an urban to a rural job incur a wage growth penalty, which is related to having to match with the wrong occupation and with a lower-paying employer. This is a long-term problem that existed even before 2008. In contrast, and this is a new phenomenon observed post-2014, men experience a wage growth increase when they switch from an urban to a rural job. They also tend to switch to a higher-paying employer. This implies that compared to men, women are particularly constrained in the type of occupation and employer they get in rural areas.
One possible explanation is that many women who relocate to rural areas do so within a family decision. The limited access to childcare in rural areas combined with gender norms that still put the mental load of child rearing on women mean that women with children in rural areas often choose a job that is close to where their children spend the day, rather than the best possible job that will enhance their wages and career progression.
Hammersmith Bridge: The country comes to Zone 2
Hammersmith Bridge has been closed to traffic for five and a half years. In summer 2021 it reopened to pedestrians and cyclists only, prompting a shift in the perception of the area as a place of pleasure for Londoners. Many more people do now walk across it, connecting Hammersmith’s riverside pubs with the bucolic Thames path of Barnes. Unfortunately, the closure of this bridge has exacerbated the very modern blights of traffic, noise, and pollution in areas around neighbouring bridges.
Quote of the week
“Success is built on details”, Tony Estanguet, President of the Paris 2024 Olympics Organising Committee.
Top of my reading list
Alan Moore is a masterful storyteller. Famous for writing graphic novels (comics, essentially) he now focuses on novels without the graphics. Having previously centred his fantastical, historical stories on his hometown of Northampton, Moore’s new novel The Great When (released 1 October) turns his impressive imagination towards London. The story follows a young bookseller in the post-Blitz city of 1949 who discovers a mystical mirror-London in parallel to the ‘real world’. Moore’s exuberant prose demands we see the magic and beauty that are intertwined with the mundane life of the city, and as ‘The Great When’ is the first of a promised quintet of ‘Long London’ books we can look forward to more of Moore’s metropolis for a while.