Changing Unchanged Inequality: Higher Education, Youth Population, and the Japan's Seniority Wages

Ken Yamada and Daiji Kawaguchi

Global COE Hi-Stat Discussion Paper Series from Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University

Abstract: Wage inequality declined in the 1990s for full-time male workers in Japan, while it in- creased in the 2000s. We find that a decreased return to firm-specific human capital, which has been neglected in previous empirical analyses of inequality, is a key factor preventing a rise in wage inequality during the prolonged period of economic stagnation, known as Japan’s lost decades. A significant fraction of the increase in wage inequality in the 2000s is a mechanical change arising from an increased share of educated and experienced workers.

Keywords: wage inequality; firm-specific human capital; heterogeneous returns; seniority wages; composition effects (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I24 J24 J31 M52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-09
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://gcoe.ier.hit-u.ac.jp/research/discussion/2008/pdf/gd12-243.pdf (application/pdf)

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:hst:ghsdps:gd12-243

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Global COE Hi-Stat Discussion Paper Series from Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tatsuji Makino ().