Why is Wage Inequality so High in the United States? Pitching Cognitive Skills Against Institutions (Once Again)

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stijn Broecke ◽  
Glenda Quintini ◽  
Marieke Vandeweyer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Wage Inequality ◽  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
The United States

scholarly journals International Emigrant Selection on Occupational Skills

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Patt ◽  
Jens Ruhose ◽  
Simon Wiederhold ◽  
Miguel Flores
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
The United States ◽  
Selection Combining ◽  
Mexican Migrants ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Type Selection ◽  
Education Levels ◽  
Worker Characteristics ◽  
Economic Motives

Abstract We present the first evidence on the role of occupational choices and acquired skills for migrant selection. Combining novel data from a representative Mexican task survey with rich individual-level worker data, we find that Mexican migrants to the United States have higher manual skills and lower cognitive skills than nonmigrants. Results hold within narrowly defined region–industry–occupation cells and for all education levels. Consistent with a Roy/Borjas-type selection model, differential returns to occupational skills between the United States and Mexico explain the selection pattern. Occupational skills are more important to capture the economic motives for migration than previously used worker characteristics.

Wage Dispersion in Finland: Searching for Human Capital

2007 ◽  
pp. 8
Author(s):  
Hannu Piekkola
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Capital ◽  
Wage Inequality ◽  
The United States ◽  
Individual Heterogeneity ◽  
Wage Dispersion ◽  
Major Increase ◽  
D Investment ◽  
Productive Worker ◽  
Boom Period

In Finland, shifts in compensation have been of a kind comparable to those in the United States, similar but with a moderate, increasing wage variance between plants, an increasing gap between average non-productive- and productive-worker wages, and an increasing share of non-production workers. In the boom period of 1995- 1998 the education premium rose. Despite the rise in individual heterogeneity, there has been no major increase in wage dispersion. The entire rise in wage dispersion has taken place between plants, while the education premium dispersion has risen mainly within plants. At the same time, the distribution of capital and Research and Development (R&D) investment across firms has worked in the direction of mitigating wage inequality.

Wages and Employment in the United States and Germany:What Explains the Differences?

2003 ◽  
Vol 93 (3) ◽  
pp. 573-602 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Beaudry ◽  
David A Green
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Capital ◽  
Technological Change ◽  
Wage Inequality ◽  
Physical Capital ◽  
The United States ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Parallel Fashion

Over the last 20 years the wage-education relationships in the United States and Germany have evolved very differently, while the education compositions of employment have evolved in a parallel fashion. In this paper, we show how these patterns shed light on the nature of recent technological change and highlight the importance of taking into account movements in the ratio of human capital to physical capital when examining changes in the returns to skill. Our analysis indicates that the United States could have prevented the increase in wage inequality observed in the 1980's by a faster accumulation of physical capital.

scholarly journals Organized Labor and Racial Wage Inequality in the United States

2012 ◽  
Vol 117 (5) ◽  
pp. 1460-1502 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jake Rosenfeld ◽  
Meredith Kleykamp
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Wage Inequality ◽  
The United States ◽  
Organized Labor

Diverging Male Wage Inequality in the United States and Ganada, 1981–1988: Do Institutions Explain the Difference?

ILR Review ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 629-651
Author(s):  
John Dinardo ◽  
Thomas Lemieux
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Wage Inequality ◽  
Labour Force ◽  
The United States ◽  
Labor Market Institutions ◽  
Hourly Wage ◽  
Differential Growth ◽  
Unionization Rate ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Using Data

The U.S. and Canadian economies have much in common, including similar collective bargaining structures. During the period 1981–88, however, although both countries witnessed a decline in the percentage of workers belonging to unions and an increase in hourly wage inequality, those changes were much more pronounced in the United States than in Canada. Using data on men in Canada and the United States in 1981 and 1988 (from the Labour Force Survey and supplements to the Current Population Survey), the authors study the effect of labor market institutions on changes in wage inequality by computing simple counterfactuals such as the distribution of wages that would prevail if all workers were paid according to the observed nonunion wage schedule. Their results suggest that much more severe declines in the unionization rate in the United States than in Canada account for two-thirds of the differential growth in wage inequality between the two countries.

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