Demographic or labour market trends: What determines the distribution of household earnings in OECD countries?

Wen-Hao Chen (), Michael Förster and Ana Llena-Nozal ()
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Ana Llena-Nozal

OECD Journal: Economic Studies, 2014, vol. 2013, issue 1, 179-207

Abstract: This article assesses various underlying driving factors for the evolution of household earnings inequality for 23 OECD countries from the mid-1980s to the mid-2000s. There are a number of factors at play. Some are related to labour market trends – increasing dispersion of individual wages and changes in men’s and women’s employment rates. Others relate to shifts in household structures and family formation – more single-headed households and increased earnings correlation among partners in couples. The contribution of each of these factors is estimated using a semi parametric decomposition technique. The results reveal that marital sorting and household structure changes contributed, albeit moderately, to increasing household earnings inequality, while rising women’s employment exerted a sizable equalising effect. However, changes in labour market factors, in particular increases in men’s earnings disparities, were identified as the main driver of household earnings inequality, contributing between one-third and one-half to the overall increase in most countries. Sensitivity analysis applying a reversedorder decomposition suggests that these results are robust.

JEL-codes: D31 I30 J12 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1787/eco_studies-2013-5k43jt5vcdvl (text/html)
Full text available to READ online. PDF download available to OECD iLibrary subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oec:ecokac:5k43jt5vcdvl

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in OECD Journal: Economic Studies from OECD Publishing Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().