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The Cross-Sectional Implications of Rising Wage Inequality in the United States

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  • Storesletten, Kjetil
  • Violante, Giovanni
  • Heathcote, Jonathan

Abstract

This Paper explores the implications of the recent sharp rise in US wage inequality for welfare and the cross-sectional distributions of hours worked, consumption and earnings. From 1967 to 1996 cross-sectional dispersion of earnings increased more than wage dispersion, due to a rise in the correlation between wages and hours worked. Over the same period, inequality in hours worked remained roughly constant, and consumption inequality increased only modestly. Using data from the PSID, we decompose the observed rise in wage inequality into changes in the variance of permanent, persistent and transitory shocks. With this changing wage process as the only primitive, we show that a calibrated overlapping-generations model with incomplete markets can account for these trends in cross-sectional US data. We also investigate the welfare costs of the rise in wage in-equality: the ex-ante loss is equivalent to a 5% decline in lifetime income for the worst affected cohorts.

Suggested Citation

  • Storesletten, Kjetil & Violante, Giovanni & Heathcote, Jonathan, 2004. "The Cross-Sectional Implications of Rising Wage Inequality in the United States," CEPR Discussion Papers 4296, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:4296
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Consumption inequality; Labour supply; Wage inequality; Welfare;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D11 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Theory
    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • D58 - Microeconomics - - General Equilibrium and Disequilibrium - - - Computable and Other Applied General Equilibrium Models
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making
    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • I32 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty
    • J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials

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