Unionization and the Evolution of the Wage Distribution in Sweden: 1968 to 2000

James Albrecht, Anders Björklund and Susan Vroman
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Anders Bjorklund

ILR Review, 2011, vol. 64, issue 5, 1039-1057

Abstract: Using the 1968, 1981, and 2000 Swedish Level of Living Surveys, the authors examine the evolution of the wage distribution in Sweden over the periods 1968–1981 and 1981–2000. The first period was the heyday of the Swedish solidarity wage policy with strong equalization clauses in the central wage agreements. During the second period, there was more flexibility for firms to adjust wages to reflect conditions such as labor shortages in particular fields. The authors find a remarkable narrowing of the wage distribution in the first period, but in the second period, wages grew more equally across the distribution. The authors decompose these changes in wages across the distribution into two components–those due to changes in the distribution of characteristics such as education and experience and those due to changes in the distribution of returns to those characteristics. They find that the wage compression between 1968 and 1981 was driven by changes in the distribution of returns, but between 1981 and 2000, the change in the distribution of returns had less of an effect on wage compression.

Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/001979391106400510 (text/html)

Related works:
Working Paper: Unionization and the Evolution of the Wage Distribution in Sweden: 1968 to 2000 (2009)
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:sae:ilrrev:v:64:y:2011:i:5:p:1039-1057

DOI: 10.1177/001979391106400510

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in ILR Review from Cornell University, ILR School
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().