Occasionally I lurk among the data of the Danish statistical bureau. Being a stats geek and insisting on policy being based on knowledge leads me to pull numbers when discussing social issues.

Recently I tried to narrow down the pay gap between the genders for single men and women. According to age and socioeconomic status. Comparing a college student to a truck driver might make it seem the truck driver

Some female debater claimed - as usual - that women were underpaid.

I claimed that the main cause for the pay gap was fathers vs mothers.

Unfortunately the breakdown didn’t allow for showing data according to age, gender, family situation/socioeconomic status

But the stats could pinpoint students.

Denmark has a population of ~6mio. whereof 256.000 men are students and 289.000 women are students ie 47/53 split covering 9% of the population.

The interesting thing is that the gap in average disposable income pay gap has grown from ~6% in the mid 90’ies to ~18% in the mid 2020’ies in favor of women.

I can’t think of any good reason for such a pay-gap being present. Its not like student mothers paying student fathers.

It could be because the student population being geographically uneven but it certainly looks fishy.

I wonder how it looks elsewhere.

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