Events

[Joint work with Andrew Levine and Ananda Martin-Caughey]

Abstract: An emerging literature has documented the polarization of the U.S. labor market since the 1980s. However, prior work has (1) almost exclusively focused on the polarization between occupations, (2) largely overlooked the distinction between occupational composition changes and relative wage changes, and (3) paid insufficient attention to the differential impact of polarization on different subsets of the labor force. We argue that all three limitations stem in part from a common methodological shortcoming---the lack of an approach for conceptualizing and quantifying polarization on the individual level. We take on this challenge and develop a new, individual-based analytic framework to revisit wage polarization. Our analysis yields several notable findings. First, our polarization measure captures differences in the timing of polarization at the upper and lower sides the wage distribution, which are often missed in previous wage inequality measures: wage polarization at the lower side took off around the early 1990s and the expansion of the upper side started around the early 2000s. Second, we revisit the role of occupations in wage polarization: wage polarization is most pronounced between occupations, but the pattern varies significantly across occupational groups. There is also evidence for within-occupation polarization, particularly at the two tails of the distribution. Wage polarization at the upper side of the distribution is almost entirely driven by changes in occupational composition, whereas polarization at the lower side is driven by both compositional changes and growing wage gaps. Last, the impact of wage polarization is uneven across groups: polarization has disproportionately disadvantaged the economic positions of less educated individuals and individuals in service occupations and, in the meantime, raised the economic positions of college graduates and individuals in professional and managerial occupations.

The Sociology Seminar Series for Hilary Term is convened by Nicholas Martindale. For more information about this or any of the seminars in the series, please contact sociology.secretary@nuffield.ox.ac.uk.