IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cen/wpaper/23-41.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Labor Market Segmentation and the Distribution of Income: New Evidence from Internal Census Bureau Data

Author

Listed:
  • Ellis Scharfenaker
  • Markus P. A. Schneider

Abstract

In this paper, we present new findings that validate earlier literature on the apparent segmentation of the US earnings distribution. Previous contributions posited that the observed distribution of earnings combined two or three distinct signals and was thus appropriately modeled as a finite mixture of distributions. Furthermore, each component in the mixture appeared to have distinct distributional features hinting at qualitatively distinct generating mechanisms behind each component, providing strong evidence for some form of labor market segmentation. This paper presents new findings that support these earlier conclusions using internal CPS ASEC data spanning a much longer study period from 1974 to 2016. The restricted-access internal data is not subject to the same level of top-coding as the public-use data that earlier contributions to the literature were based on. The evolution of the mixture components provides new insights about changes in the earnings distribution including earnings inequality. In addition, we correlate component membership with worker type to provide a tacit link to various theoretical explanations for labor market segmentation, while solving the problem of assigning observations to labor market segments a priori.

Suggested Citation

  • Ellis Scharfenaker & Markus P. A. Schneider, 2023. "Labor Market Segmentation and the Distribution of Income: New Evidence from Internal Census Bureau Data," Working Papers 23-41, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    • Handle: RePEc:cen:wpaper:23-41
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www2.census.gov/library/working-papers/2023/adrm/ces/CES-WP-23-41.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2023
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gordon Anderson & Maria Grazia Pittau & Roberto Zelli & Jasmin Thomas, 2018. "Income Inequality, Cohesiveness and Commonality in the Euro Area: A Semi-Parametric Boundary-Free Analysis," Econometrics, MDPI, vol. 6(2), pages 1-20, March.
    2. Richard Burkhauser & Shuaizhang Feng & Stephen Jenkins & Jeff Larrimore, 2011. "Estimating trends in US income inequality using the Current Population Survey: the importance of controlling for censoring," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 9(3), pages 393-415, September.
    3. Martin L. Weitzman, 1989. "A Theory of Wage Dispersion and Job Market Segmentation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 104(1), pages 121-137.
    4. Temin, Peter, 2017. "The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262036169, April.
    5. Fichtenbaum, Rudy & Shahidi, Hushang, 1988. "Truncation Bias and the Measurement of Income Inequality," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 6(3), pages 335-337, July.
    6. Dagum, Camilo, 1997. "A New Approach to the Decomposition of the Gini Income Inequality Ratio," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 22(4), pages 515-531.
    7. Anderson, Gordon & Farcomeni, Alessio & Pittau, Maria Grazia & Zelli, Roberto, 2016. "A new approach to measuring and studying the characteristics of class membership: Examining poverty, inequality and polarization in urban China," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 191(2), pages 348-359.
    8. Lubrano, Michel & Ndoye, Abdoul Aziz Junior, 2016. "Income inequality decomposition using a finite mixture of log-normal distributions: A Bayesian approach," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 830-846.
    9. Foley Duncan K., 1994. "A Statistical Equilibrium Theory of Markets," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 62(2), pages 321-345, April.
    10. Ellis Scharfenaker & Duncan Foley, 2017. "Maximum Entropy Estimation of Statistical Equilibrium in Economic Quantal Response Models," Working Papers 1710, New School for Social Research, Department of Economics, revised May 2017.
    11. Markus Schneider, 2015. "Revisiting the thermal and superthermal two-class distribution of incomes," The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, Springer;EDP Sciences, vol. 88(1), pages 1-10, January.
    12. Jeff Larrimore & Richard V. Burkhauser & Shuaizhang Feng & Laura Zayatz, 2008. "Consistent Cell Means for Topcoded Incomes in the Public Use March CPS (1976-2007)," NBER Working Papers 13941, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Philip Armour & Richard V. Burkhauser & Jeff Larrimore, 2016. "Using The Pareto Distribution To Improve Estimates Of Topcoded Earnings," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 54(2), pages 1263-1273, April.
    14. A. C. Silva & V. M. Yakovenko, 2005. "Two-class structure of the personal income distribution in the USA in 1983-2001," Computing in Economics and Finance 2005 124, Society for Computational Economics.
    15. Ellis Scharfenaker & Gregor Semieniuk, 2017. "A Statistical Equilibrium Approach to the Distribution of Profit Rates," Metroeconomica, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 68(3), pages 465-499, July.
    16. Lubrano, Michel & Ndoye, Abdoul Aziz Junior, 2016. "Income inequality decomposition using a finite mixture of log-normal distributions: A Bayesian approach," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 830-846.
    17. Shaikh, Anwar & Papanikolaou, Nikolaos & Wiener, Noe, 2014. "Race, gender and the econophysics of income distribution in the USA," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 415(C), pages 54-60.
    18. Paul Osterman, 1975. "An Empirical Study of Labor Market Segmentation," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 28(4), pages 508-523, July.
    19. Robert F. Bordley & James B. McDonald & Anand Mantrala, 1997. "Something New, Something Old: Parametric Models for the Size of Distribution of Income," Journal of Income Distribution, Ad libros publications inc., vol. 6(1), pages 5-5, June.
    20. Markus P. A. Schneider, 2013. "Evidence for Multiple Labor Market Segments: An Entropic Analysis of US Earned Income, 1996-2007," Journal of Income Distribution, Ad libros publications inc., vol. 22(2), pages 60-98, June.
    21. Bishop, John A & Chiou, Jong-Rong & Formby, John P, 1994. "Truncation Bias and the Ordinal Evaluation of Income Inequality," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 12(1), pages 123-127, January.
    22. Adrian Dragulescu & Victor M. Yakovenko, 2000. "Statistical mechanics of money," Papers cond-mat/0001432, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2000.
    23. James D. Montgomery, 1991. "Equilibrium Wage Dispersion and Interindustry Wage Differentials," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 106(1), pages 163-179.
    24. A. Drăgulescu & V.M. Yakovenko, 2001. "Evidence for the exponential distribution of income in the USA," The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, Springer;EDP Sciences, vol. 20(4), pages 585-589, April.
    25. Stephen P. Jenkins, 2009. "Distributionally‐Sensitive Inequality Indices And The Gb2 Income Distribution," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 55(2), pages 392-398, June.
    26. Acemoglu, Daron & Autor, David, 2011. "Skills, Tasks and Technologies: Implications for Employment and Earnings," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 12, pages 1043-1171, Elsevier.
    27. Feng, Shuaizhang & Burkhauser, Richard V. & Butler, J.S., 2006. "Levels and Long-Term Trends in Earnings Inequality: Overcoming Current Population Survey Censoring Problems Using the GB2 Distribution," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 24, pages 57-62, January.
    28. G.R. Mohtashami Borzadaran & Zahra Behdani, 2009. "Maximum Entropy and the Entropy of Mixing for Income Distributions," Journal of Income Distribution, Ad libros publications inc., vol. 18(2), pages 179-186, June.
    29. William Darity & Darrick Hamilton & James Stewart, 2015. "A Tour de Force in Understanding Intergroup Inequality: An Introduction to Stratification Economics," The Review of Black Political Economy, Springer;National Economic Association, vol. 42(1), pages 1-6, June.
    30. Reich, Michael & Gordon, David M & Edwards, Richard C, 1973. "A Theory of Labor Market Segmentation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 63(2), pages 359-365, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Antonio Rodríguez Andrés & Voxi Heinrich S. Amavilah & Abraham Otero, 2021. "Evaluation of technology clubs by clustering: a cautionary note," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 53(52), pages 5989-6001, November.
    2. Scharfenaker, Ellis, 2020. "Implications of quantal response statistical equilibrium," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 119(C).
    3. Ellis Scharfenaker, 2022. "Statistical Equilibrium Methods In Analytical Political Economy," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(2), pages 276-309, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ellis Scharfenaker, 2022. "Statistical Equilibrium Methods In Analytical Political Economy," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(2), pages 276-309, April.
    2. Richard Burkhauser & Shuaizhang Feng & Stephen Jenkins & Jeff Larrimore, 2011. "Estimating trends in US income inequality using the Current Population Survey: the importance of controlling for censoring," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 9(3), pages 393-415, September.
    3. Richard Burkhauser & Shuaizhang Feng & Stephen Jenkins & Jeff Larrimore, 2009. "Recent Trends in Top Income Shares in the USA: Reconciling Estimates from March CPS and IRS Tax Return Data," Working Papers 09-26, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    4. Markus P. A. Schneider, 2018. "Revisiting the thermal and superthermal two-class distribution of incomes: A critical perspective," Papers 1804.06341, arXiv.org.
    5. Stephen P. Jenkins & Richard V. Burkhauser & Shuaizhang Feng & Jeff Larrimore, 2011. "Measuring inequality using censored data: a multiple‐imputation approach to estimation and inference," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 174(1), pages 63-81, January.
    6. Paulo L. dos Santos, 2017. "The Principle of Social Scaling," Complexity, Hindawi, vol. 2017, pages 1-9, December.
    7. Philip Armour & Richard V. Burkhauser & Jeff Larrimore, 2016. "Using The Pareto Distribution To Improve Estimates Of Topcoded Earnings," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 54(2), pages 1263-1273, April.
    8. Ivan Kitov & Oleg Kitov, 2015. "Gender income disparity in the USA: analysis and dynamic modelling," Papers 1510.02752, arXiv.org.
    9. Jangho Yang, 2018. "Information Theoretic Approaches In Economics," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(3), pages 940-960, July.
    10. Vladimir Hlasny & Paolo Verme, 2022. "The Impact of Top Incomes Biases on the Measurement of Inequality in the United States," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 84(4), pages 749-788, August.
    11. Markus P. A. Schneider, 2013. "Race & Gender Differences in the Experience of Earnings Inequality in the US from 1995 to 2010," Working Papers 1303, New School for Social Research, Department of Economics.
    12. P. Jenkins, Stephen & V. Burkhauser, Richard & Feng, Shuaizhang & Larrimore, Jeff, 2009. "Measuring inequality using censored data: a multiple imputation approach," ISER Working Paper Series 2009-04, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    13. Ellis Scharfenaker & Gregor Semieniuk, 2017. "A Statistical Equilibrium Approach to the Distribution of Profit Rates," Metroeconomica, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 68(3), pages 465-499, July.
    14. Nikolaos Papanikolaou, 2020. "The Econophysics of Labor Income," Bulletin of Applied Economics, Risk Market Journals, vol. 7(1), pages 107-122.
    15. João Nicolau & Pedro Raposo & Paulo M. M. Rodrigues, 2023. "Measuring wage inequality under right censoring," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 61(2), pages 377-401, April.
    16. Muhammad Hilmi Abdul Majid & Kamarulzaman Ibrahim & Nurulkamal Masseran, 2023. "Three-Part Composite Pareto Modelling for Income Distribution in Malaysia," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 11(13), pages 1-15, June.
    17. Jangho Yang, 2023. "Information‐theoretic model of induced technical change: Theory and empirics," Metroeconomica, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 74(1), pages 2-39, February.
    18. Li Tan, 2021. "Imputing Top‐Coded Income Data in Longitudinal Surveys," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 83(1), pages 66-87, February.
    19. Scharfenaker, Ellis, 2020. "Implications of quantal response statistical equilibrium," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 119(C).
    20. Hernández-Ramírez, E. & del Castillo-Mussot, M. & Hernández-Casildo, J., 2021. "World per capita gross domestic product measured nominally and across countries with purchasing power parity: Stretched exponential or Boltzmann–Gibbs distribution?," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 568(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Inequality; Income Distribution; Mixture Model;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C16 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Econometric and Statistical Methods; Specific Distributions
    • J01 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General - - - Labor Economics: General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cen:wpaper:23-41. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Dawn Anderson (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesgvus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.