Wage Inequality Since 1975

Stephen Machin

Chapter 12 in The Labour Market Under New Labour, 2003, pp 191-200 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Wage inequality has risen significantly in the UK since the late 1970s. The most rapid widening of the gap between well paid and low paid workers occurred in the 1980s, but wage inequality probably continued to rise (at least for men), albeit at a much slower pace, through the 1990s. An important feature of rising wage inequality in the last quarter century was increased wage gaps between workers with high levels of education as compared to those with low education levels. Educational wage differentials rose at the same time as the education levels of the workforce rose suggesting that the relative demand for more educated workers increased. There is some preliminary evidence that wage differentials by education may have stopped rising at the end of the 1990s and start of the 2000s, which is consistent with the very rapid supply increases that occurred with the expansion of the higher education system.

Keywords: Gini Coefficient; Wage Differential; Hourly Wage; High Education System; Wage Inequality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-59845-4_13

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DOI: 10.1057/9780230598454_13

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