IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/umnees/0963.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Earning dynamics in Sweden: The recent evolution of permanent inequality and earnings volatility

Author

Listed:

Abstract

This paper analyzes the dynamics of earnings over the life-cycle, based on Swedish data, and the evolution of permanent and transitory earnings inequality for 2002-2015. We use data on earnings from administrative records gathered in the ASTRID database. We find that features of the data does not match the predictions of the heterogeneous or restricted income profile models commonly applied in the earning dynamics literature and estimate an alternative permanent- transitory (PT) error components model. Analyzing the covariance structure of both male and female earnings, controlling for educational background, we find that the upward trend in permanent earnings inequality observed in Sweden during the 1990s does not seem to continue during the 2000s, and the financial crisis of 2008 did not have any major impact on the variability of earnings. We further simulate the accumulation of income pension entitlements and find that variations in pension entitlements is smaller among college educated workers.

Suggested Citation

  • Gustafsson, Johan & Holmberg, Johan, 2019. "Earning dynamics in Sweden: The recent evolution of permanent inequality and earnings volatility," Umeå Economic Studies 963, Umeå University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:umnees:0963
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.usbe.umu.se/ues/ues963.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Costas Meghir & Luigi Pistaferri, 2004. "Income Variance Dynamics and Heterogeneity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 72(1), pages 1-32, January.
    2. Gustavsson, Magnus & Österholm, Pär, 2014. "Does the labor-income process contain a unit root? Evidence from individual-specific time series," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 152-167.
    3. Martin Browning & Mette Ejrnæs & Javier Alvarez, 2010. "Modelling Income Processes with Lots of Heterogeneity," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 77(4), pages 1353-1381.
    4. Hansen, Lars Peter, 1982. "Large Sample Properties of Generalized Method of Moments Estimators," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(4), pages 1029-1054, July.
    5. Fatih Guvenen, 2009. "An Empirical Investigation of Labor Income Processes," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 12(1), pages 58-79, January.
    6. Fatih Guvenen, 2007. "Learning Your Earning: Are Labor Income Shocks Really Very Persistent?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(3), pages 687-712, June.
    7. Basit Zafar, 2013. "College Major Choice and the Gender Gap," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 48(3), pages 545-595.
    8. Lillard, Lee A & Willis, Robert J, 1978. "Dynamic Aspects of Earning Mobility," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 46(5), pages 985-1012, September.
    9. James F. Moore & Olivia S. Mitchell, 1997. "Projected Retirement Wealth and Savings Adequacy in the Health and Retirement Study," NBER Working Papers 6240, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Lance Lochner & Youngki Shin, 2014. "Understanding Earnings Dynamics: Identifying and Estimating the Changing Roles of Unobserved Ability, Permanent and Transitory Shocks," NBER Working Papers 20068, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Richard B. Freeman & Robert Topel & Birgitta Swedenborg, 1997. "The Welfare State in Transition: Reforming the Swedish Model," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number free97-1.
    12. Altonji, Joseph G & Segal, Lewis M, 1996. "Small-Sample Bias in GMM Estimation of Covariance Structures," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 14(3), pages 353-366, July.
    13. Paul Bingley & Lorenzo Cappellari & Niels Westergård‐Nielsen, 2013. "Unemployment Insurance, Wage Dynamics and Inequality Over the Life Cycle," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 0, pages 341-372, May.
    14. Joel L. Horowitz & Marianthi Markatou, 1996. "Semiparametric Estimation of Regression Models for Panel Data," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 63(1), pages 145-168.
    15. Deaton, Angus & Paxson, Christina, 1994. "Intertemporal Choice and Inequality," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 102(3), pages 437-467, June.
    16. Andrews, Donald W K & Chen, Hong-Yuan, 1994. "Approximately Median-Unbiased Estimation of Autoregressive Models," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 12(2), pages 187-204, April.
    17. Michael Baker & Gary Solon, 2003. "Earnings Dynamics and Inequality among Canadian Men, 1976-1992: Evidence from Longitudinal Income Tax Records," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 21(2), pages 267-288, April.
    18. Blundell, Richard & Graber, Michael & Mogstad, Magne, 2015. "Labor income dynamics and the insurance from taxes, transfers, and the family," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 58-73.
    19. Haider, Steven J, 2001. "Earnings Instability and Earnings Inequality of Males in the United States: 1967-1991," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 19(4), pages 799-836, October.
    20. Palmer, Edward, 2000. "The Swedish pension reform model : framework and issues," Social Protection Discussion Papers and Notes 23086, The World Bank.
    21. Lillard, Lee A & Weiss, Yoram, 1979. "Components of Variation in Panel Earnings Data: American Scientists, 1960-70," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 47(2), pages 437-454, March.
    22. Magnus Gustavsson, 2007. "The 1990s rise in Swedish earnings inequality -- persistent or transitory?," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(1), pages 25-30.
    23. Nils Gottfries, 2018. "The labor market in Sweden since the 1990s," IZA World of Labor, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), pages 411-411, July.
    24. Aedín Doris & Donal O’Neill & Olive Sweetman, 2013. "Identification of the covariance structure of earnings using the GMM estimator," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 11(3), pages 343-372, September.
    25. MaCurdy, Thomas E., 1982. "The use of time series processes to model the error structure of earnings in a longitudinal data analysis," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 83-114, January.
    26. Per-Anders Edin & Robert Topel, 1997. "Wage Policy and Restructuring: The Swedish Labor Market since 1960," NBER Chapters, in: The Welfare State in Transition: Reforming the Swedish Model, pages 155-202, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    27. SOLOGON Denisa & VAN KERM Philippe, 2014. "Earnings dynamics, foreign workers and the stability of inequality trends in Luxembourg 1988-2009," LISER Working Paper Series 2014-03, Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER).
    28. Thomas N. Daymonti & Paul J. Andrisani, 1984. "Job Preferences, College Major, and the Gender Gap in Earnings," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 19(3), pages 408-428.
    29. Dmytro Hryshko, 2012. "Labor income profiles are not heterogeneous: Evidence from income growth rates," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 3(2), pages 177-209, July.
    30. Clark, Todd E, 1996. "Small-Sample Properties of Estimators of Nonlinear Models of Covariance Structure," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 14(3), pages 367-373, July.
    31. Baker, Michael, 1997. "Growth-Rate Heterogeneity and the Covariance Structure of Life-Cycle Earnings," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 15(2), pages 338-375, April.
    32. Adriaan S. Kalwij & Rob Alessie, 2007. "Permanent and transitory wages of British men, 1975-2001: year, age and cohort effects," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 22(6), pages 1063-1093.
    33. Richard B. Freeman & Robert Topel & Birgitta Swedenborg, 1997. "Introduction to "The Welfare State in Transition: Reforming the Swedish Model"," NBER Chapters, in: The Welfare State in Transition: Reforming the Swedish Model, pages 1-32, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    34. Magnus Gustavsson, 2008. "A New Picture Of Swedish Earnings Inequality: Persistent And Transitory Components, 1960–1990," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 54(3), pages 324-349, September.
    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. Holmberg, Johan, 2021. "Earnings and Labor Market Dynamics: Indirect Inference Based on Swedish Register Data," Umeå Economic Studies 984, Umeå University, Department of Economics.
    2. Holmberg, Johan, 2021. "Earnings and Employment Dynamics: Capturing Cyclicality using Mixed Frequency Data," Umeå Economic Studies 991, Umeå University, Department of Economics.

    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. Gustafsson, Johan & Holmberg, Johan, 2022. "Permanent and transitory earnings dynamics and lifetime income inequality in Sweden," Umeå Economic Studies 1005, Umeå University, Department of Economics.
    2. Gustafsson, Johan & Holmberg, Johan, 2023. "Permanent and transitory earnings dynamics and lifetime income inequality in Sweden," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    3. Koray Aktas, 2021. "Characterizing Life-Cycle Dynamics of Annual Days of Work, Wages, and Cross-Covariances," Working Papers 465, University of Milano-Bicocca, Department of Economics.
    4. Timm Bönke & Matthias Giesecke & Holger Lüthen, 2015. "The Dynamics of Earnings in Germany: Evidence from Social Security Records," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1514, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    5. Mirko Felchner, 2015. "Einkommensdynamik bei Selbständigen als Freie Berufe und abhängig Beschäftigte Eine dynamische Paneldatenschätzung mit Daten des Sozio-oekonomischen Panels," FFB-Discussionpaper 101, Research Institute on Professions (Forschungsinstitut Freie Berufe (FFB)), LEUPHANA University Lüneburg.
    6. Masakatsu Okubo, 2015. "Earnings Dynamics and Profile Heterogeneity: Estimates from Japanese Panel Data," The Japanese Economic Review, Japanese Economic Association, vol. 66(1), pages 112-146, March.
    7. Magnac, Thierry & Pistolesi, Nicolas & Roux, Sébastien, 2013. "Post schooling human capital investments and the life cycle variance of earnings," IDEI Working Papers 765, Institut d'Économie Industrielle (IDEI), Toulouse.
    8. Aedín Doris & Donal O’Neill & Olive Sweetman, 2013. "Identification of the covariance structure of earnings using the GMM estimator," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 11(3), pages 343-372, September.
    9. Sarah Meyer & Mark Trede, 2016. "Explosive earnings dynamics: Whoever has will be given more," CQE Working Papers 4716, Center for Quantitative Economics (CQE), University of Muenster.
    10. Otto Kässi, 2014. "Earnings dynamics of men and women in Finland: permanent inequality versus earnings instability," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 46(2), pages 451-477, March.
    11. Owen Freestone, 2018. "The Drivers of Life‐Cycle Wage Inequality in Australia," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 94(307), pages 424-444, December.
    12. Gustavsson, Magnus & Österholm, Pär, 2014. "Does the labor-income process contain a unit root? Evidence from individual-specific time series," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 152-167.
    13. Fatih Guvenen & Fatih Karahan & Serdar Ozkan & Jae Song, 2021. "What Do Data on Millions of U.S. Workers Reveal About Lifecycle Earnings Dynamics?," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 89(5), pages 2303-2339, September.
    14. Joseph Altonji & Disa Hynsjo & Ivan Vidangos, 2023. "Individual Earnings and Family Income: Dynamics and Distribution," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 49, pages 225-250, July.
    15. Stephen Jenkins & Peter Lambert, 2011. "Robert Moffitt and Peter Gottschalk’s 1995 paper ‘Trends in the covariance structure of earnings in the US: 1969–1987’," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 9(3), pages 433-437, September.
    16. Hayakawa, Kazuhiko, 2024. "Recent development of covariance structure analysis in economics," Econometrics and Statistics, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 31-48.
    17. Cappellari, Lorenzo & Jenkins, Stephen P., 2014. "Earnings and labour market volatility in Britain, with a transatlantic comparison," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 201-211.
    18. Cappellari, Lorenzo & Jenkins, Stephen P., 2013. "Earnings and Labour Market Volatility in Britain," IZA Discussion Papers 7491, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    19. Paul Bingley & Lorenzo Cappellari, 2019. "Correlation of Brothers' Earnings and Intergenerational Transmission," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 101(2), pages 370-383, May.
    20. Taisuke Nakata & Christopher Tonetti, 2015. "Small sample properties of Bayesian estimators of labor income processes," Journal of Applied Economics, Universidad del CEMA, vol. 18, pages 121-148, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Permanent-transitory; Income pension entitlements; earning dynamics; life-cycle inequality;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • H55 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Social Security and Public Pensions
    • J30 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - 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:hhs:umnees:0963. 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: David Skog (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inumuse.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.