[PDF] Changes In Earnings Differentials In The 1980s eBook

Author : McKinley L. Blackburn
Publisher :
Page : 24 pages
File Size : 29,61 MB
Release : 1991
Category : African Americans
ISBN :

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This paper analyzes changes in U.S. earnings differentials in the 1980s between race, gender, age, and schooling groups. There are four main sets of results to report. First, the economic position of less-educated workers declined relative to the more-educated among almost all demographic groups. Education-earnings differentials clearly rose for whites, but less clearly for blacks, while employment rate differences associated with education increased more for blacks than for whites. Second, much of the change in education-earnings differentials for specific groups is attributable to measurable economic factors: to changes in the occupational or industrial structure of employment; to changes in average wages within industries; to the fall in the real value of the minimum wage and the tall in union density; and to changes in the relative growth rate of more-educated workers. Third, the earnings and employment position of white females, and to a lesser extent of black females, converged to that of white males in the 1980s, across education groups. At the same time, the economic position of more-educated black males appears to have worsened relative to their white-male counterparts. Fourth, there has been a sizable college-enrollment response to the rising relative wages of college graduates. This response suggests that education-earnings differentials may stop increasing, or even start to decline, in the near future.

Author : McKinley L. Blackburn
Publisher :
Page : 52 pages
File Size : 32,18 MB
Release : 1999
Category :
ISBN :

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This paper analyzes changes in U.S. earnings differentials in the 1980s between race, gender, age, and schooling groups. There are four main sets of results to report.First, the economic position of less-educated workers declined relative to the more-educated among almost all demographic groups. Education-earnings differentials clearly rose for whites, but less clearly for blacks, while employment rate differences associated with education increased more for blacks than for whites.Second, much of the change in education-earnings differentials for specific groups is attributable to measurable economic factors: to changes in the occupational or industrial structure of employment; to changes in average wages within industries; to the fall in the real value of the minimum wage and the fall in union density; and to changes in the relative growth rate of more-educated workers.Third, the earnings and employment position of white females, and to a lesser extent of black females, converged to that of white males in the 1980s, across education groups. At the same time, the economic position of more-educated black males appears to have worsened relative to their white-male counterparts.Fourth, there has been a sizable college-enrollment response to the rising relative wages of college graduates. This response suggests that education-earnings differentials may stop increasing, or even start to decline, in the near future.

Author : John Bound
Publisher :
Page : 76 pages
File Size : 48,94 MB
Release : 1989
Category : Labor supply
ISBN :

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Between 1979 and 1987 there were three significant changes in the wage structure in the United States. the pecuniary returns to schooling increased by about a third; the wages of older relative to younger workers with relatively low education increased to some extent; and the wages of women relative to men rose by almost ten percent. It is important for policy purposes to know why these changes occurred and whether they are temporary or permanent. The paper investigates several alternative explanations of these wage structure phenomena, including the most popular ones that their principal causes were shifts in the structure of product demand, skilled-labor saving technological change, and changes in the incidence and level of rents received by lower skilled workers. our reading of the evidence suggests that the major cause of the dramatic movements in the wage structure during the 1980's may have been some combination of changes in both production technology and the average relative nonobserved quality of different labor groups.

Author : Claudia Goldin
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 497 pages
File Size : 23,22 MB
Release : 2009-07-01
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 0674037731

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This book provides a careful historical analysis of the co-evolution of educational attainment and the wage structure in the United States through the twentieth century. The authors propose that the twentieth century was not only the American Century but also the Human Capital Century. That is, the American educational system is what made America the richest nation in the world. Its educational system had always been less elite than that of most European nations. By 1900 the U.S. had begun to educate its masses at the secondary level, not just in the primary schools that had remarkable success in the nineteenth century. The book argues that technological change, education, and inequality have been involved in a kind of race. During the first eight decades of the twentieth century, the increase of educated workers was higher than the demand for them. This had the effect of boosting income for most people and lowering inequality. However, the reverse has been true since about 1980. This educational slowdown was accompanied by rising inequality. The authors discuss the complex reasons for this, and what might be done to ameliorate it.

Author : Francine D. Blau
Publisher :
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 20,3 MB
Release : 1998
Category :
ISBN :

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Using Michigan Panel Study of Income Dynamics data for 1979 and 1988, we analyze how a falling gender wage gap occurred despite changes in wage structure unfavorable to low wage workers. The decrease is traced to "gender-specific" factors which more than counterbalanced changes in measured and unmeasured prices working against women. Supply shifts net of demand were unfavorable for women generally and hurt high skilled more than middle and low skilled women. By analyzing wages, we find support for the notion of a gender twist in supply and demand having its largest negative effect on high skill women.

Author : Marvin H. Kosters
Publisher : American Enterprise Institute Press
Page : 236 pages
File Size : 12,68 MB
Release : 1991
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN :

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Comprises essays which describe and analyse the major changes in wage relationships between 1963 and the 1980s. Notes the increase in wage differentials for workers with different levels of schooling as the most pervasive change.

Author : Claudia Dale Goldin
Publisher :
Page : 52 pages
File Size : 26,14 MB
Release : 2007
Category : Income distribution
ISBN :

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The U.S. wage structure evolved across the last century: narrowing from 1910 to 1950, fairly stable in the 1950s and 1960s, widening rapidly during the 1980s, and "polarizing" since the late 1980s. We document the spectacular rise of U.S. wage inequality after 1980 and place recent changes into a century-long historical perspective to understand the sources of change. The majority of the increase in wage inequality since 1980 can be accounted for by rising educational wage differentials, just as a substantial part of the decrease in wage inequality in the earlier era can be accounted for by decreasing educational wage differentials. Although skill-biased technological change has generated rapid growth in the relative demand for more-educated workers for at least the past century, increases in the supply of skills, from rising educational attainment of the U.S. work force, more than kept pace for most of the twentieth century. Since 1980, however, a sharp decline in skill supply growth driven by a slowdown in the rise of educational attainment of successive U.S. born cohorts has been a major factor in the surge in educational wage differentials. Polarization set in during the late 1980s with employment shifts into high- and low-wage jobs at the expense of the middle leading to rapidly rising upper tail wage inequality but modestly falling lower tail wage inequality.