The Concept of Shapley Decomposition and the Study of Occupational Segregation

Jacques Silber, Bar-Ilan University
Joseph Deutsch, Bar-Ilan University
Yves Flueckiger, Université de Genève

This paper generalizes a decomposition procedure originally proposed by Karmel and McLachlan. The idea is to combine their approach with what is now known as the Shapley decomposition. Such a generalization offers a clear breakdown of the variation over time in occupational segregation (change in gross segregation) into one component measuring changes in net segregation and another one corresponding to changes in the margin, the latter itself including variations in the occupational structure and in the shares of subpopulations (e.g., genders) in the labor force. This new decomposition may easily be extended to cases where more than two categories are distinguished or when there are more than three dimensions. The results of the empirical illustration are based on Swiss data for 1970 and 2000 and prove the usefulness of the approach. They stress in particular that in several instances variations in gross and net segregation work in opposite directions.