Publication Date
1-1-2001
Award Type
Honorable Mention
Dissertation Advisor
Stephen Cameron
Abstract
My dissertation documents the trends in wage growth and explores the implications of the observed changes, as well as possible factors that have contributed to the trends. The first chapter examines whether the decline in employment among low-skilled young men since the late 1960s can be explained by the decline in wage growth, which has reduced the value of work considerably. The second chapter details the increases in lifetime earnings inequality over the past 30 years and shows that they have been at least as great as the much more widely studied increases in cross-sectional inequality. Finally, the third chapter investigates the extent to which skill-biased technical change has been responsible for the observed changes in the structure of wage growth.
Link to dissertation full text