Economic inequality is higher today than it has been since 1939, as measured by both the wage structure and wealth inequality. But the comparison between 1939 and 1999 is largely made out of necessity; the 1940 U.S. population census was the first to inquire of wage and salary income and...

U.S. educational and occupational wage differentials were exceptionally high at the dawn of the twentieth century and then decreased in several stages over the next eight decades. But starting in the early 1980s the labor market premium to skill rose sharply and by 2005 the college wage premium...

We use data from the Michigan Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) to study the slowdown in the convergence of female and male wages in the 1990s compared to the 1980s. We found that changes in human capital did not contribute to the trends, since women improved their relative human capital to...

Using microdata from the 1994-6 International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS), we examine the role of cognitive skills in explaining higher wage inequality in the US. We find that while the greater dispersion of cognitive test scores in the US plays a part in explaining higher US wage inequality,...

We study the impact of selection bias on estimates of the gender pay gap, focusing on whether the gender pay gap has fallen since 1981. Previous research has found divergent results across techniques, identification strategies, data sets, and time periods. Using Michigan Panel Study of Income...

Between 1890 and the late 1920s the premium to high school education declined substantially for both men and women. In 1890 ordinary office workers, whose positions generally required a high school diploma, earned almost twice what production workers did. But by the late 1920s they earned about...

The U.S labor market experienced two dramatic developments over the past twenty years: a falling male-female pay gap and a rising level of wage inequality. This paper uses Michigan Panel Study on Income Dynamics (PSID) data for 1975 and 1987 and Current Population Survey (CPS) data for 1971 and...