Educational Attainment and Wage Inequality in Turkey

This paper analyses the relationship between wage distribution and educational attainment of the workforce. Wage inequality in Turkey decreased over 2002–10; a period over which it also saw an increase in the supply of educated workers. Our findings suggest that decreasing inequality in the bottom half of the distribution was largely due to decreasing returns to education and experience; whereas the moderate decline in inequality in the upper tail of the wage distribution is explained by a fall in returns to the ‘routine’ occupational tasks. The effect of changes in the composition of workers was found to be moderate.