IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/0149.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Age, Education and Occupational Earnings Inequality

Author

Listed:
  • Edward N. Wolff
  • Dennis M. Bushe

Abstract

In this paper, we will investigate the effect of six factors on occupational earnings inequality across all occupations in our sample and across occupations in five major Census subgroups. Those six factors are: differences in tasks, different levels of efficiency, institutional factors, time worked, the demand for labor and discrimination. Age and schooling will receive primary attention in our work and it will be shown that they are important determinants of earnings inequality among professional and clerical occupations but not among skilled, semi-skilled or unskilled occupations. Ability is also hypothesized as an important factor, but no measure of ability is provided in our sample. Differences in time worked and labor demand conditions, as measured by industrial and urban-rural mix, will also be analyzed, and their effect on earnings inequality is strong in most of the occupational subsamples. Differences in the race and sex composition of occupations do not appear to be significant factors in occupational earnings inequality, and the explanation offered is that discrimination takes the form of occupational segregation rather than differences in pay for similar work. In the conclusion a sketch of a "structural" theory of income distribution is proposed to account for our results.

Suggested Citation

  • Edward N. Wolff & Dennis M. Bushe, 1976. "Age, Education and Occupational Earnings Inequality," NBER Working Papers 0149, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:0149
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w0149.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Arthur J. Alexander, 1974. "Income, Experience, and the Structure of Internal Labor Markets," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 88(1), pages 63-85.
    2. Wolff, Edward N., 1975. "Social Determinants of Occupational Wage Behavior," Working Papers 75-27, C.V. Starr Center for Applied Economics, New York University.
    3. Farbman, Michael, 1973. "Income Concentration in the Southern United States," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 55(3), pages 333-340, August.
    4. Johnson, George E & Stafford, Frank P, 1974. "Lifetime Earnings in a Professional Labor Market: Academic Economists," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(3), pages 549-569, May/June.
    5. Jacob A. Mincer, 1974. "Schooling, Experience, and Earnings," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number minc74-1.
    6. Katz, David A, 1973. "Faculty Salaries, Promotion, and Productivity at a Large University," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 63(3), pages 469-477, June.
    7. Jacob Mincer, 1962. "On-the-Job Training: Costs, Returns, and Some Implications," NBER Chapters, in: Investment in Human Beings, pages 50-79, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Link, Charles R, 1973. "The Quantity and Quality of Education and Their Influence on Earnings: The Case of Chemical Engineers," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 55(2), pages 241-247, May.
    9. Richard Ruggles, 1970. "Income Distribution Theory," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 16(3), pages 211-219, March.
    10. Welch, Finis, 1973. "Black-White Differences in Returns to Schooling," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 63(5), pages 893-907, December.
    11. Hansen, W Lee & Weisbrod, Burton A & Scanlon, William J, 1970. "Schooling and Earnings of Low Achievers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 60(3), pages 409-418, June.
    12. repec:bla:revinw:v:16:y:1970:i:3:p:211-19 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Jacob A. Mincer, 1974. "Schooling and Earnings," NBER Chapters, in: Schooling, Experience, and Earnings, pages 41-63, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Hanushek, Eric A, 1973. "Regional Differences in the Structure of Earnings," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 55(2), pages 204-213, May.
    15. Hause, John C, 1972. "Earnings Profile: Ability and Schooling," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 80(3), pages 108-138, Part II, .
    16. Klevmarken, N Anders & Quigley, John M, 1976. "Age, Experience, Earnings, and Investments in Human Capital," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 84(1), pages 47-72, February.
    17. Yoram Barzel, 1973. "The Determination of Daily Hours and Wages," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 87(2), pages 220-238.
    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. Edward N. Wolff & Joel Hay, 1977. "Educational Screening and Occupational Earnings," NBER Working Papers 0174, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    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. Philippe Cazenave, 1976. "Pour une nouvelle analyse économique de la demande de formation," Revue Économique, Programme National Persée, vol. 27(1), pages 54-84.
    2. Idrisov, Georgiy (Идрисов, Георгий) & Taganov, B.V. (Таганов, Б.), 2016. "Research of the Effect of Growth of Openness of the Russian Economy on Income Inequality in Russia [Исследование Влияния Роста Открытости Российской Экономики На Неравенство Доходов Населения В Рос," Working Papers 3136, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration.
    3. J. R. Kearl & Clayne L. Pope, 1983. "Life-Cycles in Income and Wealth," NBER Working Papers 1146, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Yoram Weiss, 1975. "The Earnings of Scientists, 1960-1970: Experience, Age and Vintage Effects," NBER Working Papers 0099, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Backman, Mikaela, 2013. "Regional Variation of Returns to Education," Working Paper Series in Economics and Institutions of Innovation 300, Royal Institute of Technology, CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies.
    6. Ward-Warmedinger, Melanie E., 1999. "Salary and the Gender Salary Gap in the Academic Profession," IZA Discussion Papers 64, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Bergemann, Annette & Mertens, Antje, 2004. "Job Stability Trends, Layoffs, and Transitions to Unemployment: An Empirical Analysis for West Germany," IZA Discussion Papers 1368, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    8. Muhammad Sabir & Zehra Aftab, 2007. "Dynamism in the Gender Wage Gap: Evidence from Pakistan," The Pakistan Development Review, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, vol. 46(4), pages 865-882.
    9. Orley Ashenfelter & Cecilia Rouse, 1998. "Income, Schooling, and Ability: Evidence from a New Sample of Identical Twins," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 113(1), pages 253-284.
    10. Brown, Byron W. & Woodbury, Stephen A., 1998. "Seniority, external labor markets, and faculty pay," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 38(4), pages 771-798.
    11. Gábor R., István, 1999. "Mi a hasonlóság az egyetemi tanulmányok és a disznóól között?. Ajánlás és széljegyzetek. Varga Júlia: Oktatás-gazdaságtan Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány, Budapest, 1998. 162 oldal [What is the simi," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(6), pages 576-582.
    12. Henderson, Daniel J. & Polachek, Solomon W. & Wang, Le, 2011. "Heterogeneity in schooling rates of return," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 30(6), pages 1202-1214.
    13. Aysit Tansel & Elif Oznur Acar, 2016. "The Formal/Informal Employment Earnings Gap: Evidence from Turkey," Research on Economic Inequality, in: Inequality after the 20th Century: Papers from the Sixth ECINEQ Meeting, volume 24, pages 121-154, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    14. Kenneth L. Sørensen & Rune Vejlin, 2014. "Return To Experience And Initial Wage Level: Do Low Wage Workers Catch Up?," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(6), pages 984-1006, September.
    15. Mora, Jhon James & Muro, Juan, 2014. "Consistent estimation in pseudo panels in the presence of selection bias," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 8, pages 1-25.
    16. Dohmen, Thomas J., 2004. "Performance, seniority, and wages: formal salary systems and individual earnings profiles," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(6), pages 741-763, December.
    17. Karina Mahirda & Heni Wahyuni, 2016. "Returning To General And Vocational High-Schools In Indonesia," Review of Economic and Business Studies, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, issue 18, pages 9-28, December.
    18. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pb:p:2373-2437 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Thierry Lallemand & Robert Plasman & François Rycx, 2007. "The establishment-size wage premium: evidence from European countries," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 34(5), pages 427-451, December.
    20. Síle O'Dorchai & Robert Plasman & François Rycx, 2007. "The part‐time wage penalty in European countries: how large is it for men?," International Journal of Manpower, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 28(7), pages 571-603, October.
    21. Justin L. Tobias, 2003. "Are Returns to Schooling Concentrated Among the Most Able? A Semiparametric Analysis of the Ability–earnings Relationships," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 65(1), pages 1-29, February.

    More about this item

    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:nbr:nberwo:0149. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.