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The seven papers in the symposium that follows use data from particular industries to examine the nature and causes of recent changes in earnings inequality in the United States. The papers provide an industry perspective on recent debates concerning the influence that technological change and institutional factors such as deregulation, de-unionization, managerial strategies, and work practices exert on the distribution of earnings. Early drafts of these papers were presented at a conference, 'Industry Studies of Wage Inequality,' organized by Craig Olson and held at the University of Wisconsin at Madison in March 1999. The extensive field research, plant (or establishment) data, and contextual understanding that provide the basis for the analyses that follow were developed in industry research centers funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Hirsh Cohen and Gail Pesyna of the Sloan Foundation provided the support and inspiration for these centers and the conference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changes in the structure of work and families over the last four decades have increased many labour market inequalities. Growing earnings inequality, adverse labour market 'shocks' for the low‐educated, and geographically concentrated pockets of deprivation are among the most evident of these in Britain. The decade since the financial crisis has brought these inequalities into sharper focus, and the Covid‐19 pandemic has further exacerbated labour market inequality. The object of this paper is to highlight the key role played by poor wage progression for lower‐ and middle‐educated workers in understanding inequality in the labour market and for designing effective policy responses. It is unlikely that we can address all the concerns about low wages, wage progression and earnings inequality through the tax and welfare system alone. The challenge is how best to balance tax and welfare benefit policy with other policies, such as human capital policies, the minimum wage and labour market regulation. The results point to a mix of policies that aim to enhance wage progression for the lower‐educated within a welfare system that supports low‐earning families and provides a minimum wage floor for hourly wages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates international differences in wage inequality and skills and whether a compressed wage distribution is associated with high unemployment across core OECD countries. Wage dispersion and wage structure are widely debated among policymakers; compressed wage structure is often perceived as an important cause of high unemployment. Firstly, this paper examines differences in wage dispersion across OECD countries and their link to skill dispersion. Some countries that have more compressed (dispersed) wage structures simultaneously have more compressed (dispersed) skill structures as well, and skill differences explain part of the differences in wage dispersion. However, even when accounted for skills, some countries have a more compressed wage structure, most likely caused by labor market institutions. We do not find an effect of wage compression on the labor market performance in the low-skill sector. Based on the Program for International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) survey of adult skills for core OECD countries, this paper cannot confirm the skill compression nor wage compression hypotheses. Rather than insisting on the deregulation of labor market institutions and reductions in public welfare policy as the main policy recommendations to achieve higher employment (and higher wage inequality), policymakers should reconsider aggregate demand deficiency and the variation in macroeconomic policies as potential explanations for the employment differences across countries. JEL Classification: J31, J24, E24 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the impact of the effective minimum wage, defined as the log difference between the minimum and the median wages, on wage inequalities in the OECD countries. Unlike the previous studies that focus on single countries in which the minimum wage has no cross-sectional variation and rely instead on within-country variations of wage distribution across regions or socio-economic characteristics, we use a country panel that allows for both cross-sectional and time-series variations in minimum wage. We also control for more factors than in the previous studies whose absence may cause endogeneity. Our results confirm the previous findings that increases in minimum wage alleviate the wage inequality at the lower tail of the wage distribution, while having little effect at the upper tail. The estimated effect is larger for women than for men, which is consistent with the fact that the share of workers who are directly affected by the changes in minimum wage is bigger among women than men. An application of the IVs of Autor, Manning and Smith (2016) supports the robustness of our findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of economic uncertainty on macroeconomic fluctuations has been studied extensively in the empirical literature; however, its distributional effects have received little attention. This paper attempts to fill this gap by investigating whether macroeconomic uncertainty affects income, wage, and consumption inequality in the United Kingdom. Our findings suggest that measures of inequality fall significantly to a macroeconomic uncertainty shock. Households in the middle and right tail of the income distribution appear to be more adversely affected relative to ones in the left tail. Income composition and households indebtedness explain a large part of the heterogeneous response. Uncertainty also appears to account significantly for the variation of income and consumption inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

German social security records involve an indicator for part-time or full-time work. In 2011, the reporting procedure was changed suggesting that a fraction of worker recorded to be working full-time before the change were in fact part-time workers. This study develops a correction based on estimating the probability of being a part-time worker before and after the break. Using the correction, the paper confirms that the rise in wage inequality among full-time workers in West Germany until 2010 is not a spurious consequence of the misreporting of working time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a comprehensive quantitative assessment of the importance of the factors associated with the rise in male wage inequality in Europe's largest economy over the period 1995-2010. We simultaneously consider an extensive set of explanatory factors including personal characteristics, measures of internationalization, task composition, union coverage, industry, region, and firm characteristics. Our study uses a different data source than most of the other prominent studies on wage inequality in Germany. We carefully assess differences implied by the different data and show that previous studies have most likely underestimated the dominating role of de-unionization for the rise in German wage inequality. As the second most important factor, we identify compositional effects of personal characteristics such as age and education. We find only moderate effects linked to internationalization, firm heterogeneity, task changes and regional convergence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the level of inequality in Spain and how it evolved over the course of the past crisis and the early stages of the current recovery. To this end, it first introduces the various dimensions of wage, income, consumption and wealth inequality, and studies how they have developed. The analysis shows less wage dispersion in Spain than in other comparable economies, even after the crisis years, while the surge in unemployment during the period resulted in a high level of inequality in per capita income. The level of inequality in Spain is more moderate when total gross household income is analysed, decreasing during the crisis as a result of pensions developing more favourably than other sources of income, in conjunction with young people delaying setting up home. Inequality in per capita consumption rose during the crisis, particularly as a result of a decrease in expenditure on consumer durables by low-income households. Wealth inequality exceeds income inequality and increased during the downturn as a result of financial assets outperforming real assets. Nevertheless, Spain’s wealth inequality is moderate by international standards, as ownership of real assets is more widespread than in other countries. The way inequality has evolved during the early stages of the current economic recovery shows that falling unemployment has enabled a reduction in wage income inequality, as well as in per capita income inequality, albeit to a lesser extent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of manufacturing employment decline on the socioeconomic outcomes within and between black and white Americans since 1960. The analysis shows that manufacturing decline had a negative impact on blacks in terms of their wages, employment, marriage rates, house values, poverty rates, death rates, single parenthood, teen motherhood, child poverty, and child mortality. In addition, the decline in manufacturing increased inequality within the black community for wages and other outcomes. Similar patterns are found for whites, but to a lesser degree—leading to larger gaps between whites and blacks in wages, marriage patterns, poverty, single-parenthood, and death rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate how payment procedures that are deemed unfair can spur unethical behavior towards innocent coworkers in a real‐effort experiment. In our Discrimination treatment, a highly unfair payment procedure with wage differentials, half the workforce is randomly selected and paid by relative performance whereas the remaining receives no payment. A joy‐of‐destruction game measures unethical behavior subsequently. Non‐earners in Discrimination destroy significantly more than in the non‐discriminatory control treatments. In Discrimination, unethical behavior is generally high for all non‐earners, independent of individual inequality aversion and relative performance beliefs. In the control treatments, inequality aversion is the main driver of destructive behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses what happened to economic inequalities in the United Kingdom in the two decades from 1995–6. In aggregate, inequality changes were unremarkable, especially by comparison with sharp increases in the 1980s. However, over the first decade economic outcomes improved across population groups, while over the second near-stagnation accompanied continuing high inequality. We show that the apparent stability of inequality in this period masked the way in which the nature and depth of economic inequalities changed after the economic crisis, leading to substantial differences between and within groups defined in different ways. Pervasively, younger adults lost out in the second decade compared to older ones. When population groups are defined in other ways (such as region, housing tenure, or ethnicity) patterns are more complex, but with the worst-off in particular groups often being 'left behind'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Who benefits from economic growth? This paper analyses the distributional impact of different types of growth within a two-sector model. The paper first presents necessary and sufficient conditions for unambiguous changes in wage inequality in a dual economy, based on analysis of the entire Lorenz curve. These conditions are then applied to the Harris–Todaro model with an urban non-agricultural sector and rural agriculture. It is shown that capital accumulation or technical progress in agriculture can shift the Lorenz curve inwards and reduce wage inequality, while the effects of development in non-agriculture are typically ambiguous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the appropriate use of cross-section microdata in life cycle models. Drawing upon recent empirical work based upon panel data, we illustrate bow these results can be used as priors to generate a distribution of life cycle earnings. Such a surrogate distribution can be shown to possess the same properties as actual distributions. We focus attention particularly upon the treatment of economic growth and the unobservable components of earnings. In the final section of the paper, we show how such distributions might he used in inequality analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Collected Papers of the Law Faculty of the University of Rijeka / Zbornik Pravnog Fakulteta Sveučilišta u Rijeci is the property of Pravni fakultet Sveucilista u Rijeci and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revista de Historia Económica / Journal of Iberian & Latin American Economic History is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In Pay-As-You-Go systems, retirement benefits result from the multiplication of the reference wage by the contribution duration by an annuity rate. This formulation can undergo some adjustments to ensure sustainability within a changing environment. In this paper, we showed that the current contribution-benefit linkage might generate a large gap between individuals in terms of profitability and thus in terms of wealth accumulation over long periods. Considering the possible career scenarios in the Algerian retirement system, we found that return rates vary from 9.6% to 13.2%. To reduce inequality, we propose a new retirement benefit formula partially based on the actuarial fairness principle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the implication of the decision to give 2006 Census respondents the option of letting Statistics Canada access their income tax files rather than answering income-related questions directly. We find that giving respondents the option to share their income tax files (or not) adds a confounding factor when it comes to measuring family-income inequality, particularly for the bottom tail of the distribution. The consent decision does not, however, materially affect the estimation of standard wage equations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the effect of recent technical change on the labor market and explains the observed differences in wage inequality among advanced countries. In particular, we focus on the difference between the inequality in the U.S. and in continental Europe. Many studies have indicated a rise in wage inequality in the U.S. over the past three decades. On the other hand, there has been little change in wage inequality in continental Europe. By introducing human capital investment into the model by Acemoglu (Am Econ Rev 89:1259-1278, ), we show that ex ante homogeneous economies would have distinct ex post wage distribution. The strategic complementarity between human capital investment and firms' hiring strategies yields the possibility that multiple equilibria exist, which explains the difference in wage distribution between the U.S. and Europe. In addition, we show that differences in tax or education systems can explain the difference in wage distribution between the U.S. and Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper estimates quantile earnings functions with data from the 2004 Tanzanian Household Worker Survey to determine if ethnicity and gender--being female--matters per se and across the distribution of earnings. We find that in the Tanzanian manufacturing sector gender intersects with ethnicity to condition earnings and the return to schooling across the distribution of earnings. This suggests that in Sub-Saharan Africa--at least in Tanzania--labor market policies aimed at eradicating gender earnings inequality may not be effective if not accompanied by policies that also aim to eradicate ethnic inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we argue that government spending played a significant role in stimulating the wave of innovation that hit the U.S. economy in the late 1970s and in the 1980s, as well as the simultaneous increase in inequality and in education attainments. Since the late 1970s U.S. policymakers began targeting commercial innovations more directly and explicitly. We focus on the shift in the composition of public demand toward high-tech goods, which, by increasing the market-size of innovative firms, functions as a de facto innovation policy tool. We build a quality-ladders non-scale growth model with heterogeneous industries and endogenous supply of skills, and show that an increase in the technological content of public spending stimulates R&D, raises the wage of skilled workers, and, at the same time, stimulates human capital accumulation. A calibrated version of the model suggests that government policy explains between 12% and 15% of the observed increase in wage inequality in the period 1976-1991. (JEL: E62, J31, O33, O41) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper reviews recent developments in the literature on wage inequality with a particular focus on why inequality growth has been particularly concentrated in the top end of the wage distribution over the last 15 years. Several possible institutional and demand-side explanations are discussed for the secular growth in wage inequality in the United States and other advanced industrialized countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is much work on the relationships between crime, unemployment and inequality. At the turn of the millennium, 2.1 million people in the U.S. were in prison or jail, rising to 6.3 million if we include those on probation or parole. A key finding is that introducing criminal activity into otherwise standard models of the labor market can significantly affect the predictions of these models. The first section of this paper presents the worker's problem taking wages as given. This provides a natural extension to the textbook job search model to incorporate crime. Section II analyzes wage setting. This shows how various types of equilibria with different crime rates can arise for different parameter values, and how sometimes multiple equilibria coexist, with different amounts of crime, inequality and unemployment. This paper has developed a search equilibrium framework that can be used to analyze the interrelations between crime, unemployment and inequality. The model is essential to analyze feedbacks that can lead to multiplicity.

This paper studies the paths from inequality in earnings to inequality in household consumption. We show that careful study of the evolution of the variances and covariances of earnings and consumption within cohorts across time can identify permanent and transitory shocks. We present an application to the evolution of inequality in the United Kingdom. We extend previous results to recognise separate earnings of partners in couples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is the identification of the hourly wages heterogeneity in the sample of individuals living in 35 European metropolitan areas. Additionally, we evaluated factors which determine spatial variability. For this purpose, we applied Mincer-type multilevel models for the micro data from the European Social Survey (2010). To delimit metropolitan areas we used Urban Audit's Larger Urban Zones. Our results suggest the greatest impact of cross-country differences in explaining metropolitan variation of wages. We confirmed the gender pay gap equal to 10-11%, the wage premium from permanent contracts (7-10%) and being responsible for supervising other workers (16%). The importance of workers and firms characteristics was proved both for individual-level and metro- level differences. It might suggests the part of inequalities between metropolises is connected with different composition of workers' skills in each metropolis and spatial sorting. Finally, we found that unexplained (by such attributes) proportion of variability across metropolises might be the result of agglomeration effects. The positive impact of Jacobs externalities was found, while we did not confirm the existence of Marshall externalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The majority of mainstream economists believe that globalization and trade liberalization have had a minor role in increasing U.S. wage inequality. A minority argues that capital mobility and outsourcing indicate a larger effect. This paper first surveys these views, and then argues that how we understand the policy consequences of trade liberalization helps determine the character our analysis of the issue itself. Thus, a shift in policy perspective, to consider the "equity costs" of trade liberalization in terms of eroded U.S. labor market institutions, produces a larger framework for analyzing the consequences of globalization and trade liberalization than is available in traditional comparative advantage efficiency reasoning. From this wider perspective, trade liberalization has likely had a greater impact on U.S. wage inequality than even the minority mainstream position allows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing earnings inequality has received considerable attention from economists. The broad consensus is that the main reason earnings inequality has increased in the U.S. over the past two decades is technical change, leading to an increased relative demand for skilled workers. The specific change in technology most often cited is improvements in computer technology. The paper argues that a different type of technological change, the shift from mass to flexible production, has been a more important cause of increasing inequality. Flexible production increases the relative demand for skilled, highly paid workers and decreases the demand for unskilled, low-wage workers, thereby creating greater earnings inequality. Two types of evidence are emphasized, the timing of the changes and the experience across countries. Increasing inequality began before the rise of personal computers, but at about the same time as the shift to flexible production. In addition, earnings inequality has increased the most in the U.S. and Great Britain, the two countries where the global shift to flexible production has been most dramatic.

Income inequality is a result from an unequal distribution of different types of incomes forming total household income. The aim of the paper is to find which income sources are the main drivers for rising inequality in Bulgaria for the last 25 years by using income inequality decomposition. The results show that wages has the biggest and growing importance for the overall inequality. Most unequal distributed incomes are those from property, but they have an insignificant role for the rising overall inequality because of the small share in total household income. Incomes that mitigate income inequality are the social transfers, but their effect varies depending on the type of transfer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper empirically examines the relationship between employment, wages and ethnicity via a case study of Kenya. I challenge the pervasive view that ethnicity in Kenya specifically and Africa more generally is related to a primordial instinct and attempt to show empirically that ethnicity is used by politicians as a political strategy to maintain power. In the process of using ethnicity, class solidarity is explicitly down played by politicians as ethnicity is reified. In this paper I specifically examine whether jobs are being used by politicians as both reward and carrot to ensure ethnic allegiances. This is done by testing whether being a member of a dominant group (in terms of population and also politically) has an impact on the possibility of employment and the level of wages. I do this using data from the 1986 Labor Force Survey which due to timing uniquely allows me to connect ethnicity and income. I find that being in a politically dominant group improves one's chances of obtaining a full time above median wage job. I show that participation in highly remunerated sectors is highly correlated with political power and a change of ethnicity of the president may change outcomes of the past presidents 'kinsfolk' being recruited into the desired sectors. Being a member of a locally dominant group in terms of population as compared to a politically dominant national group has no effect on likelihood of employment in one of the premium categories. My findings support the view that in a highly centralized and unequal state ethnicity can be reproduced via preferential employment to members of an in-group thus diminishing class solidarity that one may expect to occur between workmates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: There is a link between rural-urban remittances and wage inequality. However, the existing literature sheds little light on this topic. In this study, we establish a three-sector general equilibrium model to investigate the effects of rural-urban migrants' remittances on wage inequality. Further, we use Chinese macroeconomic data to calibrate the parameters and conduct analysis with numerical simulation. We find that, when rural-urban migrants raise their remittance rate, wage inequality between skilled labour and the urban formal sector remains unchanged in the sector- -specific capital case but narrows in the sector-mobile capital case. Moreover, in the sector-specific case, skilled and unskilled wage inequalities, wSY and wSZ, decrease at the same rate as the urban-rural wage inequalities, wXY and wXZ, respectively. In the mobile case, however, the former declines faster than the latter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper fabricates endogenous skill formation in a two-sector general equilibrium model where the unemployment of the skilled workers is caused by efficiency wage. The paper also examines the effects of the immigration of unskilled labor, the emigration of skilled labor, and the inflow of foreign capital on unemployment, skilled-unskilled wage inequality, and the level of skill formation in each unskilled working family. We find that the immigration of unskilled labor raises both the rate and level of unemployment of the skilled labor and lowers both the relative skilled-unskilled wage inequality and the level of skill formation in each unskilled working family under certain conditions. However, the emigration of skilled labor or the inflow of foreign capital gives opposite results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Iberoamericana de Ciencia, Tecnologia y Sociedad is the property of Centro de Estudios sobre Ciencia, Desarrollo y Educacion Superior and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Part of the high level of earnings inequality verified among workers in Brazil could be associated with differences in the quality of jobs. This paper analyzes the relationship between labor earnings and a measure of the technology available in the workplace and the implications of this relationship to earnings inequality in Brazil. Using data from the supplement on technological innovation in the 2005 and 2008 PNAD (National Household Sample Survey), the results show that workers with access to new technologies in the workplace receive higher earnings, even in sectors where technology should not affect productivity. Evidence suggests that disparities in the quality of jobs may have an important role on the distribution of labor earnings in Brazil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, American workers have faced a rising college premium, a narrowing gender gap, and increasing wage volatility. This paper explores the quantitative and welfare implications of these changes. The framework is an incomplete-markets life cycle model in which individuals choose education, intrafamily time allocation, and savings. Given the observed history of the U. S. wage structure, the model replicates key trends in cross-sectional inequality in hours worked, earnings, and consumption. Recent cohorts enjoy welfare gains, on average, as higher relative wages for college graduates and for women translate into higher educational attainment and a more even division of labor within the household. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Ensayos de Política Económica is the property of Pontificia Universidad Catolica Argentina and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In advanced societies, the sphere of work is subject to far-reaching changes which erode the system of gainful employment achieved in the second half of the last century, called 'typical work', i.e. full-time employment for an indefinite period with collectively negotiated wages and working conditions. This development has lead to a proliferation of various kinds of 'atypical work', most of which amount to poorly rewarded and insecure jobs with bad labour standards, and it has also weakened the traditional systems of social security. As a result, most advanced societies have experienced a significant increase in social inequality and poverty in recent decades, even though their overall social wealth has constantly grown, a state of affairs which may be deemed to be not merely undesirable, but also unjust. This judgment, however, presupposes a particular conception of social justice that submits the economic order and the working world to certain normative demands. The paper aims to illuminate these demands by proceeding in three steps. First of all, it starts with recapitulating the conditions of the rise of typical work and the features of its decay. Secondly, it seeks to sketch a conception of social justice and its requirements on the working world, on the basis of which the present situation may be considered as unjust. Finally, it will deal with the question of how to reform the present working world in a way that, as far as possible, meets the requirements of justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to liberal egalitarian ethics, individuals should be rewarded for factors under their control (the principle of responsibility), but not for factors outside their control (the principle of equalization). The paper analyses the effects of two requirements on how to reward effort within a liberal egalitarian framework: the requirement of equal reward and the requirement of solidarity. We show that it is impossible to establish a framework that satisfies the principle of equalization in all respects, and that a generalized version of the egalitarian equivalent mechanism is a very plausible liberal egalitarian approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The falling cost of international business travel and communication motivates highly-skilled workers who live in developed countries to spend more of their time co-operating with less-skilled workers in developing countries. This tends to narrow the gap between developed and developing countries in the wages of less-skilled workers, but to widen the wage gap within developed countries between highly-skilled and less-skilled workers. The paper formalizes this mechanism and tests it on data for the United States and developing countries. The two effects on wage inequalities of greater co-operation of highly-skilled workers with workers in developing countries both seem quantitatively important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows that a large fraction of the 1973-2003 growth in residual wage inequality is due to composition effects linked to the secular increase in experience and education, two factors associated with higher within-group wage dispersion. The level and growth in residual wage inequality are also overstated in the March Current Population Survey (CPS) because, unlike the May or Outgoing Rotation Group (ORG) CPS, it does not measure directly the hourly wages of workers paid by the hour. The magnitude and timing of the growth in residual wage inequality provide little evidence of a pervasive increase in the demand for skill due to skill-biased technological change. (JEL J31). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise in U. S. wage inequality over the past two decades is commonly associated with an increase in the use of "skill-biased" technologies (e.g., computer equipment) in the workplace, yet relatively few studies have attempted to measure the direct link between the two. This paper explores the relationship among inequality, worker education levels, and workplace computer usage using a sample of 230 U.S. industries between 1983 and 2002. The results generate two primary conclusions: First, this rising inequality in the United States has been caused predominantly by increasing wage dispersion within industries rather than between industries. Second, within-industry inequality is strongly tied to both the frequency of computer usage among workers and the fraction of total employment with a college degree. Both results lend support to the idea that skill-biased technological change has been an important element in the rise of U.S. wage inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a quantitative investigation of the population-land inequality-land clearance nexus. Drawing on the literature on farmer optimization behaviour, the study formalizes and empirically tests a model of population-induced agricultural land clearance. The model makes several assumptions about this process: (a) The rate at which agricultural land is brought into production due to rising population pressures accelerates with the level of inequality in access to land, (b) Egalitarian systems have a greater capacity to absorb rising numbers of people per unit of land area and, thus, will have lower rates of agricultural land clearance than higher ones and (c) Irrespective of its degree of egalitarianism, the capacity of any system to hold people in one place will eventually break down once a critical population threshold is reached. Due to their lower population absorptive capacity, this level will be reached sooner under unequal systems of land distribution. Thus, the model also hypothesizes that the stimulatory impact of population growth on the demand for new land will exhibit a non-linear threshold pattern. For the farmer, the decision to clear a new plot of land will reflect these population-inequality interactions: Earnings from farming in settled areas will tend to fall as population densities and inequality in access to land increase. Time series results confirm that rural population growth is a significant factor driving agricultural land clearance in many of the 59 developing countries of our sample. Results also suggest that this rate of clearance is largest in countries with highly inegalitarian patterns of distribution. In contrast, cross-sectional regression results do not suggest anydirectrole for land inequality in population-agricultural land use outcomes. Contrary to the model’s assumption that this relationship should follow a non-linear threshold pattern, cross-sectional results also find no evidence that the absorptive capacity of highly densely populated land systems has been reached on average. However, they do provide support for an indirect linear relationship: Population induced agricultural land clearance is significantly magnified as inequality in access to land increases. Drawing on the empirics of the growth-inequality literature, the study suggests that this magnifying role may be linked to inequality’s impact on the assets of the poor. That is, by undermining the capacity of the rural poor to make productive investments in the land base, inequality in land distribution mediates population pressures in a way that affects both the quality and quantity of assets available to the poor to raise incomes, invest in skills accumulation, and spur demand in the rural economy as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the implications of the standard Heckman (Heckit) correction for selectivity bias in wage and earnings functions that are subsequently used in wage decompositions. Even when justified, Heckit selectivity correction introduces some fundamental ambiguities in the context of wage decompositions. The ambiguities arise from group differences in the selection term which consists of a parameter multiplied by the Inverse Mills Ratio (IMR). The parameter is identified as the product of the standard deviation of the errors in the wage equation and the correlation between the wage equation error and the selection equation error. How should group differences in these parameters be interpreted in terms of structural differences and endowment effects? The same issue arises with respect to group differences in the IMR which reflect nonlinear group differences in the determinants of selection and in the probit coefficients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many economists have argued that the observed increase in wage inequality in developed economies over the past 30 years is due to skill‐biased technical progress. In this paper we put forward a somewhat different technology‐based argument, namely that the increased inequality was caused by technical change linked to the pervasive innovation wave associated with the New Economy. This technical change was not skill‐biased in the usual sense, but rather raised the reward to adaptability. This alternative approach based on the notion of ‘general‐purpose technology’ can shed light on a number of outstanding puzzles on the evolution of wage inequality both between and within educational groups. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It is a central tenet of most contemporary theories of justice that the badly-off have a right to some of the resources of the well-off. In this paper, I take as my starting point two principles of justice, to wit, the principle of sufficiency, whereby individuals have a right to the material resources they need in order to lead a decent life, and the principle of autonomy, whereby once everybody has such a life, individuals should be allowed to pursue their conception of the good, and to enjoy the fruits of their labour in pursuit of such conception. I also endorse the value of fairness, whereby the right person or institution makes the decision as to whether to bring about justice. I show that justice and fairness can be satisfied only if we all enjoy a combination of private and collective rights over the world. In making that case, I shall argue that the set of ownership rights I advocate differs from readily available conceptions of restricted private ownership in two important respects. First, it is such that in some circumstances, two individuals or more can have control rights over the same property at the same time, not, as is standardly the case in legal systems, by contracting with one another (through gifts and joint purchase), but simply on grounds of justice. Second, it allows that, if necessary, property-owners be expropriated from their property without compensation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we examine the hours of paid work of husbands and wives in 10 industrialized countries, using data from the Luxembourg Income Study. We present results on the average hours of paid work put in jointly by couples, on the proportion working very long weekly hours, and on gender equality in working time within families. The United States ranks at or near the top on most indication of working time for couples, because of (1) a high proportion of dual-earner couples; (2) long average work week., especially among women; and (3) a high proportion of individual. who work very long hours. In terms of gender equality, the United States ranks above average in paid working time among dual-earner couples with no children but fares less well among working parents. Finally, we discuss policies and institutions that may help explain the distinctive United States results, namely the long hours and moderate level, of gender equality, including the regulation of maximum hours, the demand for pan-time work, and the public provision of child care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we examine the reorganization of work in labor markets dominated by the presence of high-technology industries from 1980 to 199O. Using Public Use Microdata Samples, we identify trends in spatial, industrial, occupational, gender, and racial divisions of labor and their effects on earnings inequality. Patterns in these changing work structures are linked to both general and specific theories of labor market development, structures, and processes. We find that centers of high-tech employment exhibit varied patterns of agglomeration, decline, and dispersion over the decade. Moreover, industrial and occupational divisions embedded within these high-tech spaces show variation across labor market areas as well. We identify some general trends, including the increasing dominance of upper-tier workers (professional, technical, and managerial) across most high-tech areas and the effects of Reagan's defense-related policies in the generation of new high-tech areas in certain locales. An analysis of the processes of earnings generation in high-tech labor markets reinforces the importance of divisions or segmentation of labor for understanding earnings inequality and its embeddedness in specific labor market contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I study wage mobility in Great Britain using the New Earnings Surveys of 1975- 94 and the British Household Panel Surveys of 1991-94. Measuring mobility in terms of decile transition matrices, I find a considerable degree of immobility within the wage distribution from one year to the next. Mobility is higher when measured over longer time periods. Those in lower deciles in the wage distribution are much more likely to exit into unemployment and non-employment. Measuring mobility by studying changes in individuals' actual percentile rankings in the wage distribution, I find evidence that short-run mobility rates have fallen since the late 1970s. This has potentially important welfare implications, given the rise in cross-section earnings inequality observed over the last two decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The household dependency ratio on young or old family members is considered a major determinant in poverty when human capital cannot support the family income. Since the elderly suffer a significant risk of poverty and make up an increasing percentage of the population, the country's economic inequality is quite sensitive to population ageing. Family size adversely affects household well-being when focusing on children under 15 and adults over 65. The dependency increases the burden on bread earners and reduces consumption expenditure. The current study uses family reliance and the multidimensional poverty concept to analyse how poverty is distributed throughout different provinces. The current study intends to provide poverty analysis across all four provinces of Pakistan using the Alkire and Foster method of multidimensional poverty indexes from Household Integrated Economic Survey data. The study found that increasing child dependence significantly reduces consumption and exacerbates poverty. The Seniors Dependency Indicator demonstrates that as the elderly population in Sindh, Punjab, and Khyber Pakhtoon Khwa (KPK) declines, poverty decreases. All provinces saw an increase in the prevalence of child poverty, with the highest KPK rates in Punjab (6%) and Sindh (4%), respectively. Since the functional sector does not have to shoulder the full load, the government should set up safety support mechanisms for these segments to lessen the burden on wage workers. According to the survey, access to clean water and literacy rates are the other leading indicators of poverty alleviation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]