Skills tasks, and class- an integrated class based approach to understanding recent trends in economic inequality in the USA

Adam James Berg ()
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Adam James Berg: Kyoto University

Evolutionary and Institutional Economics Review, 2019, vol. 16, issue 1, No 6, 117-138

Abstract: Abstract This paper examines the large body of literature regarding the evolution of income inequality in the USA over the last several decades, and interprets it in an integrated class framework. Namely, the canonical supply–demand model for skilled labor, the skill biased technological change/routine biased technological change literature, and Piketty’s “super-manager” hypothesis are examined and integrated into Erik Olin Wright’s class framework. In doing so, this paper clarifies the causal links between income and skills, tasks, class, and income, as well as the flows of people from skills to jobs/occupations and class by mapping these connections on a class framework. By breaking down the complementary factors involved in growing economic inequality described in the literature, this paper (1) lays the foundation for separately analyzing the evolution of the causal links and flows described in the literature, (2) identifies elements in the literature that are sometimes conflated, and (3) endogenizes the institutional factors that shape the causal mechanism. These connections are supported with calculations of wage trends from 1980 to 2010 using May/ORG data-sets, and the income variance for the period is decomposed by skill, tasks, and class.

Keywords: Inequality; Class; Skill; Tasks (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J2 J3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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DOI: 10.1007/s40844-018-0100-2

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