Racial, ethnic and gender differentials in socio-economic status : the Israeli labor market case

In the present study, data from the Labor Force Surveys of Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) for the years 1990 and 2000 are used to examine the occupational segregation in the Israeli labor market based on the 5 ethnic sub-samples including European-American Jews, Asian-African Jews, Russian Jews, Native-Born Jews and Non-Jews who mainly represent the Arab citizens of Israel. The analysis is done separately for men and women to avoid interaction since men and women demonstrate different labor market characteristics in general and in Israel. OLS regression analysis and decomposition techniques are used to differentiate between the effects of human capital and labor credentials and the other factors on the socioeconomic gaps between different ethnic and racial groups. The results indicate that there are significant socioeconomic differences both among different Jewish groups and between Jewish and non-Jewish. Moreover the differences among the groups can only partially be explained by the differences in labor credentials of the groups.