Page 234 - Contributed Paper Session (CPS) - Volume 1

CPS1284 Rabeh M.
discrimination one. According to the results of decomposition shown in Table
2, the occupation dummies are found to have the highest effect (about 6%)
on the explained part of the wage gap while the industry dummies are found
to have the largest impact on the unexplained part with being 8.57%.

3. Discussion and Conclusion
Using the standard Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition and the RIF-quantile
regression function techniques, we decompose the distributional non-
refugees/refugees wage differentials among wage workers in Palestine into
composition effects, explained by differences in productivity characteristics,
and discrimination effects, attributable to unequal returns to covariates. The
Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition shows a notable mean wage gap (about 17%)
between non-refugee workers and refugee workers. Around 8% of the gap is
attributed to the differences in productivity characteristics between non-
refugee and refugee workers, while 9% of the mean wage gap is explained by
the discrimination against refugees. This is consistent with what Pierre
Krahenbuhl, the commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and works
agency for Palestine refugees in the near east (UNRWA) declared about the
status of the Palestinian refugees in the general assembly of the UNRWA in 9
2
November 2015 . He confirmed that the Palestinian refugees in West Bank
and Gaza feel left behind, they are still suffering from increasing vulnerability
and isolation, and to severe inequalities and discrimination against them from
the society they are living in.
However the unconditional quantile decomposition reveal that wage gap
between the two groups (refugees and non-refugees) is not uniform
throughout the wage distribution, and wage differentials are much higher at
the bottom and top than at the middle of the wage distribution. No
discrimination effect was traced at the 10th percentile, and the general
characteristics of the workers are responsible for the wage gap (27.4%)
between the two groups. This means that in low wage jobs both non-refugee
and refugees have equal opportunities to access into the labor market, which
based on the general characteristics of each group. The discrimination effect
become very clear in the median part of the wage distribution. Here we might
look to many of the jobs in the SMEs which mainly classified as family business
which mostly located in the urban areas in Hebron and Nablus. In the top part
of wage distribution, the discrimination gap was narrowed but still the non-
refugees have more access to the highest wages’ jobs in the Palestinian labor
market. Many of the high skills jobs in the private sectors (ICT sector,
knowledge intensive business services, etc), universities, international NGOs
requires high skills and competences, therefore refugee workers who achieve

2 https://www.un.org/press/en/2015/gaspd599.doc.htm

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