Full Citation
Title: Earnings Inrquality Within the Urban United States 2000 to 2006
Citation Type: Miscellaneous
Publication Year: 2008
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Abstract: This report examines inequality in hourly labor earnings for a set of nearly 300 U.S. metropolitan areas between 2000 and 2006. On the whole, the data indicate that the dramatic rise in inequality seen in the United States between 1980 and 2000 continued through 2006. Some of the primary findings can be summarized as follows: 1. Overall inequality in the United States as a whole continued to expand. Between 2000 and 2006, the ratio of the 90th percentile of the distribution of hourly earnings to the 10th percentile increased from 5.2 to 5.7. 2. Workers with high levels of education saw their wages rise faster than workers with less formal schooling. In 2000, individuals with a bachelor’s degree were paid approximately 50 percent more, on average, than a high school graduate, whereas workers with a master’s, doctoral or professional degree were paid 69 percent more. By 2006, these premia had risen to, respectively, 54 percent and 78 percent. 3. The widening of the earnings scale also was driven by increasing differences in the labor incomes of workers with similar observable characteristics (e.g., age, gender, race, education). Widening “residual” inequality accounted for as much as half of the rise in the overall degree of dispersion in the wage distribution between 2000 and 2006. 4. Among four metropolitan areas within the Eighth Federal Reserve District—Little Rock, Louisville, Memphis and St. Louis—all experienced rising inequality during this period. While the increases in Little Rock, Memphis and St. Louis mimicked that of the nation as a whole, Louisville’s increase was somewhat smaller because . . .
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Authors: Wheeler, Christopher H
Publisher: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Other
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