Abstract:

Income inequality is a normal phenomenon in the developed economies being a consequence of how the individuals are gifted with different skills and resources, namely their ability to exploit them. Beyond the assessment of the normality limits of this phenomenon, there are times when wage differences are due to certain forms of discrimination through which are created difficulties in obtaining jobs by certain groups of people, provided that they have the necessary skills and training (Sanders, 2007). Research on the contribution of discrimination to support the income inequality between individuals was initiated by Becker (1968) and Arrow (1973) starting from the black minority situation in the United States. Afterwards, research was extended to women, long-term unemployed persons, in general to all groups likely to create a negative image to the employers. The origin of discrimination is given by the prejudices of the employers, or as appropriate by the customer and employee`s preferences. According to the European Commission Report (2009, Equality between women and men) high level of education of women is not directly reflected by the positions they occupy in the labour market. Women work mainly in "feminized" sectors and occupations and remain in low-class jobs, with fewer opportunities to access leadership positions. In this article we analysed income inequality both within each group and between groups using Dalton method (1997) of Gini index decomposition and using the macro command VBA (Visual Basic Application), on a database for the 2003-2009 period for Romania.