Manufactured inequality
Article Abstract:
The little-known aspect of how income inequality is actually socially efficient is explored. The idea of a beneficial socially engineered inequality has been around since Adam Smith contended that willful investments in education and skill acquisition are the major reasons for wage inequality. Another point raised is how indivisibilities in labor market, as well as other life choices, can create incentives for voluntary redistribution, for individual participation in monetary activities that result in differences in wealth among identical, risk-averse people. In so doing, these people thus willfully and selfishly establish a type of 'natural' inequality among themselves.
Publication Name: Journal of Labor Economics
Subject: Human resources and labor relations
ISSN: 0734-306X
Year: 1997
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Economic inequality among women
Article Abstract:
Recent research into changes affecting people's working lives has failed to take sufficient account of the expansion in economic inequality among women. This trend is now becoming increasingly significant in the workplace and in the household in many countries, especially in the US. There is now an elite of highly paid women in key management positions, while most women still work in the expanding low-wage, non-union service sector, often in insecure jobs. This trend is likely to lead to some countries developing an increasingly polarised social structure.
Publication Name: British Journal of Industrial Relations
Subject: Human resources and labor relations
ISSN: 0007-1080
Year: 1995
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What caused rising earnings inequality in Britain? evidence from time series, 1970-1993
Article Abstract:
Britain the the United States showed a large rise in wage inequality during the 1980s, continuing until the early 1990s. This raises questions as to whether a decentralized wage setting system together with a weakened union movement is an adequate method of organisation in the labour market. Explanations for wage inequality in Britain include skill shortages, increased unemployment, inflation, and major changes in institutional pay setting arrangements.
Publication Name: British Journal of Industrial Relations
Subject: Human resources and labor relations
ISSN: 0007-1080
Year: 1996
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