Changes in the Italian wage distribution: the role of routine and social tasks

Teresa Barbieri

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: A broad economic literature has analyzed changes in the wage structure using a taskbased framework. This paper complements this literature by providing evidence on the relationship between the task content of occupation (routine and social tasks) and wage inequality among Italian employees using unconditional quantile regressions (UQRs). This article also quantifies the contribution of changes in occupational task prices and other factors to changes in the distribution of wages over the 2009-2019 period using the RIF decomposition approach. Results show that behind the almost flat trend of wage inequality observed for the last decade operate divergent forces that counterbalance each other. In particular, changes in the reward for social tasks operate in an inequalityenhancing direction. However, changes in the wage structure linked to other factors, such as education and sector of economic activity, go in the opposite direction and offset the contribution of social task-intensive occupations.

Keywords: wage distribution; occupational tasks; unconditional quantile regression; RIF decomposition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J21 J24 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-11-15
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