Hours Inequality

Daniele Checchi, Cecilia Garcia-Penalosa, Jelle Visser () and Lara Vivian
Additional contact information
Jelle Visser: UvA - Universiteit van Amsterdam
Lara Vivian: European Commission [Brussels]

Working Papers from HAL

Abstract: The vast literature on earnings inequality has paid limited attention to the role played by hours of work, which is surprising given the changes in working patterns observed over the past decades. This paper fills this void, emphasizing the importance of inequality in hours worked and the correlation between hours and hourly wages. We use harmonized data for France, Germany, the UK and the US to examine the extent to which these factors have contributed to recent trends in earnings inequality. We find that both changes in hours inequality and in the correlation between hours and wages matter in the three European countries. Our results indicate that an equalising force, stemming from the fact that those with lower hourly wages worked longer hours, has disappeared. We examine these changes in their institutional context and find evidence consistent with this change being driven by pressure from increased openness and the weakening of labour institutions.

Keywords: Earnings inequality; working hours; hours elasticity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-08
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://amu.hal.science/hal-03872764v2
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://amu.hal.science/hal-03872764v2/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Hours Inequality (2022)
Working Paper: Hours Inequality (2022)
Working Paper: Hours Inequality (2022)
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:hal:wpaper:hal-03872764

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().