Skills, education, and the rise of earnings inequality among the “other 99 percent”

By David H. Autor. Science, 2014

1,063 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The singular focus of public debate on the “top 1 percent” of households overlooks the component of earnings inequality that is arguably most consequential for the “other 99 percent” of citizens: the dramatic growth in the wage premium associated with higher education and cognitive ability. This Review documents the central role of both the supply and demand for skills in shaping inequality, discusses why skill demands have persistently risen in industrialized countries, and considers the economic value of inequality alongside its potential social costs. I conclude by highlighting the constructive role for public policy in fostering skills formation and preserving economic mobility.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, General Health Professions, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/62498243769e741c936e9da545c3a7dcc9d2285f

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Citations in the corpus

The Labor Market Impacts of Technological Change: From Unbridled Enthusiasm to Qualified Optimism to Vast Uncertainty (2022, background): “See Autor (2014) for details.”
The fading American dream: Trends in absolute income mobility since 1940 (2017, neutral): “In contrast, recent cohorts experienced much less growth across most quantiles of the income distribution (17, 21).”
Polanyi's Paradox and the Shape of Employment Growth (2014, neutral): “ The employment-‐‑to-‐‑population ratio, for 4 This section of the paper draws heavily on Autor (2014a), with some paragraphs quoted directly.”
The causes of rising wage inequality: the race between institutions and technology (2016, methodology): “The SBTC literature has often tended to empirically ignore wage-setting institutions, emphasizing ‘the central role of both the supply and demand for skills in shaping inequality’ (Autor, 2014, pp. 843).”
Linking Economic Complexity, Institutions and Income Inequality (2015, background): “…to capital (Engerman & Sokoloff; 1997; Gustafsson & Johansson, 1999; Acemoglu, Aghion & Violante, 2001; Fields, 2002; Beinhocker, 2006; Collier 2007; Davis, 2009; Acemoglu & Robinson, 2012; Brynjolfsson & Afee, 2012; Stiglitz, 2013; Frey & Osborne, 2013; Piketty, 2014; Autor, 2014, Hartmann, 2014).”
Robots, reshoring, and the lot of low-skilled workers (2018, background): “com/abstract=3206062 workers (Acemoglu and Autor, 2012; Autor, 2014) and, in combination with rising incomes of the better educated, an increase in wage inequality ( Piketty, 2014), iv) offshoring of labor intensive production to low-wage countries (Grossman and Rossi-Hansberg, 2008), v) an uptick i”
Human capital and income inequality* (2018, background): “The premium for higher education and skills has also risen across many ADBI Working Paper 810 Lee and Lee 4 developed countries in recent decades, contributing substantially to the rise in earnings inequality (Autor 2014).”
Entrepreneurship and income inequality (2018, neutral): “Parallel to this ‘rise of the entrepreneurial economy’ (Audretsch, 2009) scholars have noted a trend of accelerating income inequality and increasingly stratified unemployment (Atkinson, 2003; Autor, 2014; Goldthorpe, 2010).”
Community Colleges and Upward Mobility (2019, positive): “Since 1980, the earnings gap between college and high school graduates has roughly doubled in the United States (Autor, 2014). Rising demand for skilled labor has outpaced modest growth in the supply of college-educated workers (Katz and Murphy, 1992; Goldin and Katz, 2008; Acemoglu and Autor, 2011)”