With their tremendous economic growth, the Asian Tigers serve as an excellent laboratory for examining the effects of rapid industrialization on women's labor market status. Beginning in the 1970's, East Asia experienced rapidly rising real wages, with Korean real wage growth outpacing its regional neighbors. Understanding how women's earnings in Korea performed relative to men's will provide extremely useful lessons for other developing countries seeking to follow the east Asian example. The purpose of this planning grant research is to collect additional data and provide a detailed assessment of earnings gap determinants between men and women using two decomposition procedures. The first, a level analysis, decomposes the earnings gap in individual years into a portion explained by observable, gender-specific skill differences, and a residual portion which is commonly attributed to discrimination. The second procedure evaluates the contribution of changes over time in gender-specific factors and in the overall wage structure to the evolution of gender earnings gaps. Using the latter technique to examine the Korean experience will provide a more detailed analysis of gender earnings gap determinants than earlier developing country studies. The planning Grant results will form an excellent basis for preparing the subsequent NSF full research proposal. The future proposal will examine the ability of Korea's labor policies to generate reductions in gender earnings inequality. This research will contribute valuable new evidence on whether the Asian Tigers' labor reforms, designed to emulate the labor market policies of industrialized countries, have actually helped female workers to obtain higher relative earnings. ***
