Full Citation
Title: Unions and Inequality Over the Twentieth Century: New Evidence from Survey Data
Citation Type: Journal Article
Publication Year: 2017
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Abstract: Despite a large literature on unions and inequality, virtually no representative microdata on union membership is available prior to the 1973 CPS. We bring a new source of data, opinion polls, primarily from Gallup (N ≈ 900, 000), to look at the effects of unions on inequality from 1936 to the present. First, we present a new time series of household union membership from this period. Second, we estimate union household income premiums over this same period, finding that despite large changes in union density, the premium holds steady, at roughly 15 log points. For most of this period, it is larger for non-whites and the less-educated. The variance of residual incomes is also more compressed in the union than the non-union sector throughout our sample period. Third, we show that throughout this period, selection into unions with respect to proxies for predicted non-union wages (e.g., education, race, occupational status) was negative and u-shaped, with selection reaching its most negative point in the 1950s and 1960s. Finally, we present a number of results that, across a variety of identifying assumptions, suggest unions have had a significant, equalizing effect on the income distribution over our long sample period: unconditional-quantile regressions using repeated cross-sectional variation across households, time-series regressions using variation over time in national union density and panel regressions using variation over time within states all point to unions reducing income inequality.
Url: https://economics.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/union_ineq_25oct2017_ik.pdf
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Authors: Farber, Henry; Herbst, Dan; Kuziemko, Ilyana; Naidu, Suresh
Periodical (Full): Quarterly Journal of Economics
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Volume: 136
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Data Collections: IPUMS USA, IPUMS CPS
Topics: Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Poverty and Welfare
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