Changes in Inequalities of Access to Dental Care in Australia 1977–2005

Information on dental visits, income and demographic variables were drawn from the Australian National Health Survey between 1977 and 2005. Income‐related inequality in access to dental care was calculated using the generalised concentration index (G) and decomposition methods were employed to examine associations with socio‐demographic and policy‐amenable factors. Statistically significant increases in inequality in dental care use were found after 1995. From 0.026 in 1995, G increased to 0.045 in 2005. The associations between increases in inequality and changes in the uptake of private health insurance suggest a contributory role of the introduction of the Commonwealth government's 30 per cent rebate for private health insurance.     

The Return to Caring Skills: Gender,Class, and Occupational Wages in the US

Feminist economics has contributed to the understanding of the economic importance of care work. Most studies find a wage penalty associated with caring occupations. This study extends the feminist research on care work beyond caring occupations by identifying specific caring skills and activities derived from the 2014 O*NET job-evaluation data. Four caring skills – (1) Assisting and Caring for Others, (2) Establishing and Maintaining Interpersonal Relationships, (3) Service Orientation, and (4) Social Perceptiveness – were used in ordinary least-squares and quantile wage regressions for 623 occupations in the United States. Findings indicate that the return to caring and assisting skills results in a wage penalty for low-wage workers but a wage premium for workers in high-wage and male occupations. By identifying the impact of gender and class on the economic return to particular caring skills, the study broadens the understanding of care work, especially in relation to US wage inequality.     

von Thünen: Capital,Production Functions,Marginal Productivity Wages,and the Natural Wage

This paper puts seminal contributions to theory of production functions and maximization of explicit quantitative objective functions by Johann Heinrich von Thünen into a systematic historical perspective. We show that his comprehensive ‘Tableau Economiques’ do imply two exact parametric production functions. Moreover, the renowned ‘geometric mean wage’ formula is restated as an exact CES marginal labor productivity wage for σ = 2. We review four alternative modes of normative (natural) wage calculations without an explicit production function, and conclude that von Thünen's natural wage differentiation formulas are bona fide alternatives for deriving the natural wage formula.     

Wage Growth Distribution and Changes over Time: 2001–2018

We explore how much wage growth varies among Australian employees and how it has changed over the 2001–2018 period. The results show that, after increasing between 2002 and 2007, wage growth significantly slowed post 2008, and particularly from 2013 onwards, returning to early 2000s levels. Employee age, education, employment contract, occupation and industry explain a large share of differences in wage growth between individuals. Employee occupation is more important post‐2008 than pre‐2008, whereas education is more important pre‐2008. Finally, casual employees receive a wage growth premium during periods of economic upturn and a penalty during downturn.     

Human Capital, Growth, and Inequality in Russia

Our model captures the fact that Russia has both much human capital and an education system that produces the wrong skills for a market economy. We define a rule for the timing of educational restructuring that is Pareto optimal and that dominates all later times in a Paretian sense while simultaneously reducing inequality. We demonstrate that failure to implement restructuring early in the transition process is likely to produce a very long delay that will significantly reduce Russia's human capital. A retreat from subsidizing public education is likely to be counterproductive. We argue that early educational restructuring should be emphasized in Russia's transition strategy. J. Comp. Econom., December 1999, 27(4), pp. 618–643. Lingnan University, Tuen Mun, N.T., Hong Kong, People's Republic of China; University of Colorado, Denver, Denver, Colorado 88217; and Royal Holloway College, University of London, Egham, Surrey TW20 OEX, United Kingdom.     

Corporate Tournaments, Human Capital Acquisition, and the Firm Size–Wage Relation

This paper provides a possible explanation for the empirically observed size–wage effect and inter-industry wage differences. It develops a model in which incentives for workers to accumulate general human capital are provided by corporate tournaments, where workers with the highest level of general human capital win promotions. Given that the prizes in such tournaments are determined by outside market conditions, the investment and the equilibrium wages depend on firm and industry characteristics. The model implies that workers in bigger firms and in more technology intensive and profitable firms and industries acquire more human capital and receive higher wages and benefits.     

Understanding Rising Income Inequality in Germany, 1999/2000–2005/2006

We examine the factors behind rising income inequality in Europe's most populous economy. From 1999/2000 to 2005/2006, Germany experienced an unprecedented rise in net equivalized income inequality and poverty. At the same time, unemployment rose to record levels, part‐time and marginal part‐time work grew, and there was evidence for a widening distribution of labor incomes. Other factors that possibly contributed to the rise in income inequality were changes in the tax and transfer system, changes in the household structure (in particular the rising share of single parent households), and changes in other socio‐economic characteristics (e.g., age or education). We address the question of which factors were the main drivers of the observed inequality increase. Our results suggest that the largest part of the increase was due to increasing inequality in labor incomes, but that changes in employment outcomes and changes in the tax system also contributed considerable shares. By contrast, changes in household structures and household characteristics, as well as changes in the transfer system only seem to have played a minor role.     

Wage inequality in Turkey, 2002–10

This paper studies the evolution of wage inequality in Turkey using household labour force survey data from 2002 to 2010. Between 2002 and 2004, the relative supply of more‐educated workers to less‐educated workers remained constant while their relative wages decreased in favour of less‐educated workers. However, between 2004 and 2010, the relative supply of more‐educated workers to less‐educated workers rose, while their relative wages remained constant or kept increasing in favour of more‐educated workers. This suggests factors other than those implied by a simple supply‐demand model are involved, such as skill‐biased technical change or minimum wage variations. The decomposition of wage inequality reveals that the price (wage) effect dominates the composition effect particularly in the first period. Our results show that the real minimum wage hike in 2004 corresponds to a major institutional change, which proved to be welfare‐increasing in terms of wage inequality. The upper‐tail (90/50) wage inequality decreased between 2002 and 2004 and stayed constant thereafter, whereas the lower‐tail (50/10) wage inequality decreased throughout the period. Our findings thus provide evidence supporting the institutional argument for explaining wage inequality.     

Wage distribution in Japan, 1989–2003

Abstract. This study examines the recent trend of the Japanese wage distribution based on a micro‐level data set from the Basic Survey on Wage Structure (1989–2003). We perform several decomposition analyses of changes in the distribution of the hourly wage. We observe that lower returns to education and years of tenure contribute to a diminishing income disparity between groups for both sexes. A larger variance within a group contributes to the wage disparity for males, while an increased heterogeneity of workers' attributes contributes to the wage disparity for females. The Dinardo, Fortin, and Lemieux decomposition confirms the basic findings with a parametric variance decomposition.     

From Physical to Human Capital Accumulation: Inequality and the Process of Development

This paper develops a growth theory that captures the replacement of physical capital accumulation by human capital accumulation as a prime engine of growth along the process of development. It argues that the positive impact of inequality on the growth process was reversed in this process. In early stages of the Industrial Revolution, when physical capital accumulation was the prime source of growth, inequality stimulated development by channelling resources towards individuals with a higher propensity to save. As human capital emerged as a growth engine, equality alleviated adverse effects of credit constraints on human capital accumulation, stimulating the growth process.     

Bayesian Unconditional Quantile Regression: An Analysis of Recent Expansions in Wage Structure and Earnings Inequality in the US 1992–2009

We develop Bayesian inference for an unconditional quantile regression model. Our approach provides better estimates in the upper tail of the wage distribution as well as valid small sample confidence intervals for the Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition. We analyze the recent changes in the US wage structure using data from the CPS Outgoing Rotation Group from 1992 to 2009. We find that the largest part of the recent changes is explained mainly by differences in returns to education while the decline in the unionization rate has a small impact, and that earnings inequality is rising more at the top end of the wage distribution.     

Intangible Capital and Labor Productivity Growth: Panel Evidence for the EU from 1998–2005

Using new international comparable data on intangible capital investment by business within a panel analysis between 1998 and 2005 in an EU country sample, a positive and significant relationship between intangible capital investment and labor productivity growth is detected. This relationship proves to be robust to a range of alterations. The empirical analysis confirms previous findings that the inclusion of business intangible capital investment in the asset boundary of the national accounting framework increases the rate of change of output per hour worked more rapidly. In addition, intangible capital is able to explain a significant portion of the unexplained international variance in labor productivity growth, and becomes a dominant source of growth.     

Inequality in Vietnamese Urban–Rural Living Standards, 1993–2006

We investigate urban–rural inequality in Vietnam using data from the Vietnam Living Standard Surveys between 1993 and 2006. We find that mean per capita expenditure of urban households is consistently twice as much as that of rural households and that the urban–rural gap monotonically increases from the poorer to the richer groups of the expenditure distribution. To isolate factors contributing to the urban–rural gap, we apply the Oaxaca–Blinder type decomposition to a newly developed unconditional quantile regression method. Factors contributing significantly to the high urban–rural gap include inter‐group differences in education, household age structure, labor market activity, geographic location and their related returns, with education playing the most important role. Over the period, consistent with the country's massive rural–urban migration, we find that domestic remittance plays a significant role in shortening the urban–rural expenditure gap in the later years, 2002 and 2006.     

Real Wages,Demand and Employment in the UK 1921–1938: A Disaggregated Analysis

This paper uses the Layard and Nickell model of the labour market to examine the determinants of employment at a sectoral level for the interwar UK economy. Sectoral level data permits examination of the differing responses to changes in the determinants of employment. Estimation of employment functions indicates significant elasticities with respect to aggregate demand variables across a wide range of sectors but less support for a negative real wage effect, particularly in those industries responsible for major losses in employment. The evidence is therefore more consistent with the low-aggregate-demand explanation of labour market behaviour than it is with the high-real-wage hypothesis.     

Recent Changes in British Wage Inequality: Evidence from Large Firms and Occupations

Using a linked employer–employee dataset covering large firms, we present new evidence on British wage inequality trends over the past two decades. Differences between firms in the average wages they paid did not drive these trends. Between 1996 and 2005, greater wage variance within firms accounted for 86% of the total increase in wage variance among employees. In the following decade, wage inequality between firms continued to increase, whereas overall wage dispersion decreased. Approximately all the contribution to inequality dynamics from estimated firm-specific factors, throughout the employee wage distribution, disappears after accounting for the changing occupational content of wages.     

Economic Growth and Wage Stagnation in Peru: 1998–2012

From 1998 to 2012, the Peruvian economy exhibited rapid growth. Moreover, the composition of the labor force improved in terms of education and experience, two variables that are typically associated to higher human capital. The average worker in 2012 had a higher level of education and was one and a half years older than in 1998, reflecting the impact of the demographic transition. However, the average real wage was roughly constant. We show that a decline in the wage premium for education, and to a minor extent for experience, is responsible for the lack of growth in the average real wage. Had these two premia remained constant throughout the period of analysis, average labor earnings would have increased by about 2.6% per year, of which 0.7 percentage points are accounted for by the changes in the composition of the labor force in terms of age and education. We explore the role of the relative supply of workers with different levels of human capital as an explanation for the decline in the wage premium for education. Finally, we analyze the implications of these findings for some macroeconomic variables, as earnings and wage inequality, the labor share and total factor productivity.     

Changes in Job Structure and Rising Wage Inequality in Urban China, 1995-2007

We use household surveys from 1995, 2002, and 2007 to examine how changes in job structure contributed to China’s rising urban wage inequality, considering three job characteristics: occupation, industry, and firm ownership. The explanatory power of job structure for wage inequality increased between 1995 and 2007. Both the change in relative number of jobs (composition effect) and the change in between-job and within-job wage gaps (price effect) contributed to rising wage inequality. Price effect was the major contributor, whereas composition effect played a larger role in the 1995–2002 period than in the 2002–2007 period, and at the lower-half distribution. Between-job inequality played a major role in the first period, and within-job inequality played a major role in the second period. Our results suggest that both technological change and institutional features influence job structure and wage inequality.     

人力资本需求与工资差距:技术、贸易和收入的影响

人力资本水平的提高和技术贸易的发展都会促进人力资本密集型技术的进步,增加高等人力资本水平劳动力的需求,从而扩大了工资差距.在商品贸易中,制成品出口比例的增加会改变我国的产品需求结构,使高等人力资本密集型产品的生产增加.同时,居民收入水平的提高带来了消费升级,也促进了高等人力资本密集型产品的生产.高等人力资本密集型产品的生产引起了高等人力资本水平劳动力需求的增加,扩大了工资差距.     

Wages and Employment in China''s SOEs, 1980–1994: Corporatization, Market Development, and Insider Forces

Using firm-level panel data, we evaluate the importance of reform measures, market development, and insider forces in wage and employment determination in China's state sector. Initial output per worker is positively correlated with change in employment, and market wages are significantly associated with firm employment and wages in the later period. Both indicate development of the labor markets. Corporatization lowered wages by 11 to 15% and improved productivity by 6%. Finally, we find evidence that labor markets for managers and engineers have been developed more than those for production workers and that wage premiums for college graduates have increased dramatically since the late 1980's. J. Comp. Econom., December 1999, 27(4), pp. 702–729. IRIS, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742.