Abstract
Recently, a renewed interest in wage structure analysis has been brought about by the increase in wage inequality observed in the USA during the 1980s. In particular, there has been a lot of research on the increasing wage gap between skilled and unskilled workers, and with respect to educational attainment. The following reasons have been pointed out as causes of increased wage differences: (1) the increase in supply of unskilled and poorly educated workers (Katz and Murphy, 1992; Borjas, Freeman and Katz, 1992); (2) the decrease in demand for unskilled workers due to an increase in the imports of labour-intensive goods (Murphy and Welch, 1992; Johnson and Stafford, 1993); (3) technological progress with a biased demand towards skilled and highly educated labour (Bound and Johnson, 1992; Davis and Haltiwanger, 1991; Mincer, 1993); (4) the decrease of the union participation rate (Freeman, 1993); and (5) the increase of foreign competition in concentrated industries (Borjas and Ramey, 1995).
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Ohtake, F. (1998). The United States. In: Tachibanaki, T. (eds) Wage Differentials. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-26281-6_4
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