Social class and workers’ rent, 1983–2001

Sociologists and economists continue to seek explanations for the growth of earnings inequality since the late 1970s. In this article, we draw upon the structural tradition of labor market analysis in sociology in order evaluate the conjecture that selective rent destruction is a source of the recent increase in earnings inequality. In empirical analysis of the Outgoing Rotation Groups of the Current Population Surveys from 1983 to 2001, we demonstrate that (1) the earnings of workers at the bottom of the class distribution have declined relative to the earnings of those at the top and (2) the variance of wage premia associated with employment in alternative industries has declined relatively more for those at the bottom of the class distribution. Adopting the position from both the sociology and labor economics literatures that these industry wage premia are reasonable measures of industry rents, we conclude that the results support the rent destruction conjecture and, by implication, that structural models of labor markets can explain some of the increase in earnings inequality.     

Work and pay in flexible and regulated labor markets: A generalized perspective on institutional evolution and inequality trends in Europe and the U.S.

In recent years a “unified theory” has emerged out of labor economics, which argues that a combination of “macroeconomic shocks” and flexible labor market institutions in the U.S. has produced strong upward trends in wage inequality, while these same shocks have produced high unemployment and low employment growth in Europe as a side effect of the wage stability preserved by that continent's rigid labor market institutions. This paper takes issue with the common view that inequality trends are best explained by a model of stable institutions interacting with changing macroeconomic forces. It argues that European institutions in fact have changed, and that institutional changes which were triggered by the broader macroeconomic forces have affected the form as well as the size of inequality trends. While the U.S. has experienced rising strong skill-based wage inequality, institutional change in France has produced an upward trend in the density of insecure jobs and an increased concentration of low-skill workers in insecure jobs. These results challenge the view that low employment rates is the sole mechanism through which European labor markets have absorbed asymmetric shocks to their demand for labor.     

中国城市居民劳动供给行为特征

经过40多年的改革开放和计划生育政策实施,我国城市居民家庭规模、家庭财富、受教育程度等影响劳动供给行为的因素均发生了巨大变化。这种变化对就业政策的制定和相关福利政策的实施都有较大影响。运用来自29个省市6675个城市家庭、8771个居民的调查数据对我国城市居民劳动供给行为进行了研究。结果表明:我国城市居民劳动供给曲线整体上呈现向右上方倾斜的特征,随着工资上涨,劳动者工作时间随之增长,但是工资弹性仅有0.52,处于缺乏弹性的区间;分类型看,女性、户主、受教育程度较低者工资弹性较大,对工资变动更加敏感;女性、户主、受教育程度较高者收入弹性更大,对收入变动更加敏感;分年龄阶段看,18—30岁的新生代劳动力工作时间受工资和非工资收入影响均不显著,31—45岁的劳动力比45岁以上劳动力工资弹性和收入弹性更高,对工资和非工资收入更加敏感。本文的研究结果对细化实施就业政策和制定相关福利政策具有一定启示作用。     

Changes in inequality and unemployment over the 1980s: comparative cross-national responses

This paper reviews the research evidence regarding high and persistent unemployment in the western European nations and widening inequality in the United States and selected European countries. It has been suggested that both of these problems are due to fundamental economic shifts in labor demand within the more industrialized world that have led to declines in the demand for less skilled workers: The effect on countries with more regulated labor markets was rising unemployment, while in less regulated labor markets it was rising wage inequality. The paper considers the evidence for this hypothesis, as well as the research questions and policy issues that it raises.The author thanks Rebecca London and Leslie Moscow for research assistance.     

Earnings inequality and subnational political economy in the United States, 1970–2000

Previous studies of rising inequality in the United States have overlooked the potential role of subnational political economic variation as an institution that shapes earnings restructuring. This paper uses hierarchical linear models to examine how state right-to-work laws contribute to growth in inequality in 80 metropolitan labor markets from 1970 to 2000. Contrary to conventional expectations, labor markets in states with right-to-work laws experience relatively mild growth in earnings inequality, and are less unequal by 2000 than non-RTW labor markets. The trend cannot be fully explained by union density, job growth, uneven development or variation in racial inequality. The findings contribute to a distinctly sociological perspective on rising inequality that considers how social, institutional and economic factors interact at the local and state levels to shape earnings.     

The changing nature of wage inequality

The paper reviews recent developments in the literature on wage inequality with a particular focus on why inequality growth has been particularly concentrated in the top end of the wage distribution over the last 15 years. Several possible institutional and demand-side explanations are discussed for the secular growth in wage inequality in the United States and other advanced industrialized countries.

流动人口在城市劳动力市场中的地位:三群体研究

关于流动人口在城市劳动力市场中的地位问题,过去已有大量文献,但研究重点是农民工。这里把外来市民纳入观察视野,利用2008年"迁移和流动劳动力与中国大城市发展"调查数据,分析工资收入和社会保险参与的影响因素。主要研究发现:在工资收入上,不同户籍身份劳动者之间没有净差异;在养老保险和工伤保险参与上,本市居民、外来市民和农民工参与的可能性依次递减。这意味着,工资收入已经基本上由劳动力市场决定,而社会保险参与依然与户籍身份有关。不过,这种关联方式已经从过去的城乡户籍身份歧视转向本地/非本地权益差异。     

An analysis of variations in U. S. fertility and female labor force participation trends

This study is based on time series data from 1947–1977 on fertility and female labor force participation, and examines (a) the effects of male relative income and female earnings on the level and timing of fertility and female labor force participation, and (b) the relative importance of variations in relative income and female wage rates in explaining the fluctuations in both fertility and female labor supply. The results suggest that relative income exerts a significant positive effect on fertility and a negative effect on female work effort. However, female wage rates appear to be the dominant factor in explaining variations in fertility and female labor force participation over the past two decades, with increases in female earnings leading to both depressed fertility and increased labor force participation of women.     

The fortunes of one's birth: Relative cohort size and the youth labor market in the United States

Using two different measures of relative cohort size – one indicating the size and placement of an individual's own birth cohort, and the other, the ratio of young to prime age adults in the United States in that year – it has been possible to isolate strong effects of the population age structure on wages in the United States over the past thirty-three years. These effects have been strong enough that virtually all of the observed change in the experience premium, and a substantial proportion of the changes in the college wage premium, can be explained by the relative cohort size variables alone. Even changes in the amount of within-group variance in wages appear to be largely a function of changing age structure, and absolute wage levels have been strongly affected by these demographic changes, suggesting that population growth can have positive effects on the economy. Received: 27 January 1998/Accepted: 6 June 1998     

Employment gains and wage declines: The erosion of black women’s relative wages since 1980

Public policy initiatives in the 1950s and 1960s, including Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity law, helped mitigate explicit discrimination in pay, and the expansion of higher education and training programs have advanced the employment fortunes of many American women. By the early 1980s, some scholars proclaimed near equity in pay between black and white women, particularly among young and highly skilled workers. More recent policy initiatives and labor market conditions have been arguably less progressive for black women’s employment and earnings: through the 1980s, 1990s, and the first half of the 2000s, the wage gap between black and white women widened considerably. Using data from the Current Population Survey Merged Outgoing Rotation Group (CPS-MORG), this article documents the racial wage gap among women in the United States from 1979 to 2005. We investigate how demographic and labor market conditions influence employment and wage inequality among black and white women over the period. Although shifts in labor supply influence the magnitude of the black-white wage gap among women, structural disadvantages faced by black women help explain the growth in the racial wage gap.     

Immigrants,visible minorities,and self-employment

Historically, self-employment was perceived as a mechanism whereby immigrants could circumvent discriminatory practices in wage labor. More recent research by Borjas in the United States, however, suggests that this view is incorrect. Immigrants, particularly members of visible minorities, are disadvantaged in both the wage labor and the self-employed markets. This pattern has not been replicated in Canada, however; after controlling for several socioeconomic attributes, it is found that foreign-born, self-employed visible minority-group members are not at a disadvantage in relation to the majority population. Foreign-born visible minority group members earn less, however, in the wage labor force. In contrast, it was found that there is no statistically significant difference between native-born visible minority group members and others in the wage labor force, and that native-born, self-employed minority-group members may earn more than others in that market segment.     

Longevity and Lifespan Variation by Educational Attainment in Spain: 1960–2015

For a long time, studies of socioeconomic gradients in health have limited their attention to between-group comparisons. Yet, ignoring the differences that might exist within groups and focusing on group-specific life expectancy levels and trends alone, one might arrive at overly simplistic conclusions. Using data from the Spanish Encuesta Sociodemográfica and recently released mortality files by the Spanish Statistical Office (INE), this is the first study to simultaneously document (1) the gradient in life expectancy by educational attainment groups, and (2) the inequality in age-at-death distributions within and across those groups for the period between 1960 and 2015 in Spain. Our findings suggest that life expectancy has been increasing for all education groups but particularly among the highly educated. We observe diverging trends in life expectancy, with the differences between the low- and highly educated becoming increasingly large, particularly among men. Concomitantly with increasing disparities across groups, length-of-life inequality has decreased for the population as a whole and for most education groups, and the contribution of the between-group component of inequality to overall inequality has been extremely small. Even if between-group inequality has increased over time, its contribution has been too small to have sizable effects on overall inequality. In addition, our results suggest that education expansion and declining within-group variability might have been the main drivers of overall lifespan inequality reductions. Nevertheless, the diverging trends in longevity and lifespan inequality across education groups represent an important phenomenon whose underlying causes and potential implications should be investigated in detail.     

农村内部收入不平等变动的成因——基于回归分解的研究途径

近年来中国农村居民收入持续增长,但是农村收入差距却持续扩大。采用回归分解的方法,利用吉林省农户抽样调查数据,对农村内部收入不平等及其变动趋势的成因进行分析。研究结果表明,劳动力投入、工资性收入和人力资本对农户收入的增加起到明显的作用;影响农村收入不平等水平的要素有劳动力投入、耕地、工资性收入、人力资本要素以及地区差异;耕地、工资性收入和劳动力投入对农村内部收入不平等的增加有显著影响,其中耕地的作用占51.60%,超过一半的解释能力,而教育对降低收入不平等水平有一定的作用。     

结婚、生育对工资的影响研究 ——基于性别工资差距角度

随着技术进步和女性人力资本水平的提高,男性和女性的劳动生产率差异逐渐缩小,但性别工资差距在我国是否缩小?全面开放的"二胎政策"又是否加深了女性就业困境?本文使用CGSS 2015数据,从结婚、生育角度出发,运用工具变量法、分位数回归、Oaxaca-blinder分解等方法考察婚育事件对劳动力工资的影响及其作用机制,探讨婚育视角下的性别工资差距问题,提出相应对策建议以促进性别公平。研究首先通过对城镇劳动力的婚姻状态和生育情况与工资性收入进行实证分析,发现在控制了个人特征、人力资本、职业性质和地区等因素后,性别工资差距仍显著存在且婚育事件拉大了该差距。其中结婚使男女劳动力的工资水平均有所提高,但由于原始工资水平的差异和溢价大小的不同,性别工资差距被拉大;生育使男性工资增长,女性工资缩水,这同样加大了性别工资差距。其次基于分位数回归结果进行Oaxaca-blinder平均工资差异分解,结果显示随着收入的增加,性别工资差距在缩小,但婚姻和生育对此差距的解释力度却越来越大且相对稳定。即低收入群体的工资差距较大,但婚育对该差距的解释力度较小,相反高收入群体的性别工资差距较小,但婚育对该差距的贡献却很大。因此,缩小婚姻和生育造成的性别工资差距、消除性别歧视、保障女性职业的可持续发展是亟待解决的问题。     

区域经济环境对工资性别差异的影响——基于多层模型的分析途径

本文建立了中国城镇居民工资方程的多层模型,并提出了相应的工资差异分解方法,用于分析区域经济环境对工资性别差异的影响。结果表明,在所有地区劳动力市场中,均存在明显的工资性别差异。虽然地区市场化水平的提高有助于个体工资水平的提升,但却导致工资性别差异的扩大;尽管地区失业率的上升将对个体工资获得产生不利影响,但却导致工资性别差异的缩小。市场化程度越高的地区,工资性别歧视越严重。因此,在市场化进程中,政府在努力发展教育和扩大就业的同时,应致力于实施公平的工资分配制度,将有助于缓解针对女性的工资歧视,进而有助于工资性别差异的缩小。     

Fringe benefits and income inequality

In this paper, we analyze the distribution of fringe benefits among workers and underline its implications for income inequality. To this end, we develop a positional approach to inequality based on the concept of rent as a potential link between positions and their rewards. We hypothesize that workers extract rent in the form of benefits in industries with worker leverage (in the form of unioniziation, internal labor market, and public employment) or share rent with firms in highly profitable industries that endure for efficiency wage reasons. On the basis of a unique dataset from Israel, we test these hypotheses by estimating the probabilities of obtaining benefits according to industries’ structural features while controlling for cross-industrial differences in workers’ demographic and human capital characteristics. The analyses reveal that benefits are determined by structural factors, representing a separate dimension of the rewards attached to positions, different from earnings. We further stress the importance of incorporating fringe benefits into inequality research, given that benefits together with earnings stratify workers and evidently signify structured positions in the economy.     

劳动力市场“去管制化”与“知识失业”

文章从劳动力市场"去管制化"出发,提出对中国"知识失业"现象的解释。理论模型发现,随着劳动力流动和工资"去管制化",受教育人口不断增加,与之伴随的则是"知识失业"的出现和增加。但当劳动力市场进一步"去管制化",知识失业率在增加到一定程度后开始下降。因此,"知识失业"是劳动力市场"去管制化"的结果,"知识失业"的出现在一定程度上是暂时的、阶段性的,继续推进劳动力市场改革,"知识失业"现象就会减少甚至消弭。微观数据实证分析证实,劳动力流动"去管制化"和工资"去管制化"都是2002年样本劳动力市场出现"知识失业"的原因,2009年样本劳动力流动"去管制化"仍是"知识失业"出现的重要原因,但工资"去管制化"效应不再显著。     

城市工资上涨、劳动力转移与投资拉动增长方式——基于中国地级城市面板数据的分析

改革开放后,中国以高投资率带动了城市经济的高速增长,但随着农村剩余劳动力存量的不断减少,劳动力供给增长开始跟不上高投资带来的劳动力需求的增长,城市经济的发展正面临着工资加速上涨、投资的产出与就业效应不断降低的挑战。文章利用2004～2009年中国地级城市面板数据进行实证分析,结果显示,城市工资上涨对劳动力供给的拉力是递减的,而对劳动力需求的抑制作用却是递增的;劳动力市场均衡的比较静态分析结果显示,投资的工资上涨效应在递增,而投资的产出与就业效应在递减,因此城市工资上涨是必然趋势。此外,工资上涨对外商直接投资有明显抑制作用,在国内外双重压力下,中国继续实行投资拉动的增长方式已不是明智的选择。     

城市农民工歧视问题研究

采用中国住户调查数据和综合社会调查数据考察我国城市劳动力市场的户籍差异,并使用Oaxaca分解方法研究户籍歧视对差异的解释力度及其变动。研究表明,城市农民工无论在就业待遇还是就业保障方面均受到歧视。2002—2006年,农民工与城市工工资差异不断缩小,户籍歧视对工资的影响也相应降低;然而,农民工与城市工的就业保障差异在逐年扩大,户籍歧视的影响效应不断上升。     

The ambiguities of U.S. temporary foreign worker policy

Expansion of temporary worker programs has figured prominently in recent proposals to reform United States immigration policy. The Florida sugar cane industry has been using foreign workers from the English-speaking Caribbean since 1943. The 8000 to 9000 workers annually admitted under section H-2 of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act to cut cane constitute the largest legal nonimmigrant labor force in the United States. Examination of the Florida H-2 program reveals that existing temporary worker policy is ambiguous, if not contradictory, on the issues of the displacement of domestic workers; the characteristics and value of H-2 workers; their impact on local communities in the United States; and the effects of seasonal labor migration on the migrant and his country. Suggestions for improving policy include strengthening of statutory guidelines and administrative agencies, adoption of a more market-sensitive adverse effect wage rate, making farm labor more attractive to American workers, removing distinctions between foreign and domestic workers, and measures to improve the lot of the migrant and his home society.This article is drawn from a study funded by a grant from the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development (R01-HD-14277-01). The Center for Latin American Studies and the Division of Sponsored Research of the University of Florida provided additional financial support for field work in the Caribbean. Fuller discussions of the results are found in McCoy (1984a), McCoy and Wood (1982) and Wood and McCoy (forthcoming). The author would like to acknowledge the suggestions of Jose Alvarez, Robert Bach, Marian Houston, Steve Sanderson and Charles Wood, his collaborator on the larger project. The comments of David North and especially Edwin Reubens on an earlier version, presented at the 1984 meeting of the American Political Science Association, are also appreciated.