U.S. Wage Inequality, Technological Change, and Decline in Union Power

James S. Mosher
Additional contact information
James S. Mosher: Ohio University

Politics & Society, 2007, vol. 35, issue 2, 225-263

Abstract: Wage inequality, including the college/high school education premium, has increased substantially in the United States. A key part of the most widely accepted explanation for this is that skill-biased technological change accelerated during this time. This article suggests that the impact of skill-biased technological change was closer to constant in the second half of the twentieth century. This leaves a large unexplained decrease in the college/high school education premium in the 1940s and a large unexplained increase in the 1980s. The current article provides evidence that the upsurge and decline in union power during those respective periods provide a good explanation for these unexplained wage inequality changes.

Keywords: inequality; unions; technological change; skill bias; social democracy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0032329207300394 (text/html)

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:sae:polsoc:v:35:y:2007:i:2:p:225-263

DOI: 10.1177/0032329207300394

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Politics & Society
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().