Increasing earnings inequality has been an important feature of the US and UK labour markets in recent years. The increase appears to be related to an increased demand for skilled labour and an increase in the returns to education. In this paper we examine what has happened to earnings...

Human capital models imply that both the distribution of education and returns to education affect earnings inequality. Decomposition of these 'quantity' and 'price' components have been important in understanding changes in earnings inequality in developed and developing countries. This paper...

Though extensive research has described the prevalence of educational assortative mating, the causes of its variation across countries and over time is not well understood. Using data from the Luxembourg Income Study Database, I investigate the impact on marital sorting of both inequality...

Developing countries often face two well-known structural problems: high youth unemployment and high inequality. In recent decades, policymakers have increased the share of government spending on education in developing countries to address both of these issues. The empirical literature offers...

This discussion paper describes the extent of social inequalities both within and between the countries of the European Union. In the first three chapters we address the micro level of individual life courses: education, employment and income. The following chapters analyse the societal...

The ‘paradox of progress’ is an empirical regularity that associates more education with larger income inequality. Two driving and competing factors behind this phenomenon are the convexity of the ‘Mincer equation’ (that links wages and education) and the heterogeneity in its returns, as...

The pattern of economic rates of return to investments in education can help us to understand the benefits of schooling. It was common knowledge that the returns to education were highest for the primary level of education and lower for subsequent levels. Recent evidence suggests that the...

The main goal of this paper is to document and analyze the long-term evolution of inequality of opportunity and thus extend the recent empirical literature, which is mainly concerned with its measurement at a specific point in time. Using repeated cross-section surveys for five European...

The main goal of this paper is to document and analyze the long-term evolution of inequality of opportunity (IOp) in the four largest European economies (France, Germany, Great Britain and Italy). Relative IOp represents an important portion of total income inequality, with values ranging from...