Department of Sociology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, 01003;
Department of Sociology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, 01003.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2020 Apr 28;117(17):9277-9283. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1918249117. Epub 2020 Apr 13.
It is well documented that earnings inequalities have risen in many high-income countries. Less clear are the linkages between rising income inequality and workplace dynamics, how within- and between-workplace inequality varies across countries, and to what extent these inequalities are moderated by national labor market institutions. In order to describe changes in the initial between- and within-firm market income distribution we analyze administrative records for 2,000,000,000+ job years nested within 50,000,000+ workplace years for 14 high-income countries in North America, Scandinavia, Continental and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia. We find that countries vary a great deal in their levels and trends in earnings inequality but that the between-workplace share of wage inequality is growing in almost all countries examined and is in no country declining. We also find that earnings inequalities and the share of between-workplace inequalities are lower and grew less strongly in countries with stronger institutional employment protections and rose faster when these labor market protections weakened. Our findings suggest that firm-level restructuring and increasing wage inequalities between workplaces are more central contributors to rising income inequality than previously recognized.
有大量文献记载，许多高收入国家的收入不平等现象已经加剧。然而，收入不平等加剧与工作场所动态之间的联系、不同国家内部和之间的不平等程度、以及这些不平等在多大程度上受到国家劳动力市场制度的调节等问题仍不明确。为了描述初始企业内和企业间市场收入分配的变化，我们分析了北美、斯堪的纳维亚、欧洲大陆和东欧、中东和东亚 14 个高收入国家的 5000 多万个工作场所年份中嵌套的 20 亿多个工作年份的行政记录。我们发现，各国的收入不平等程度和趋势差异很大，但几乎所有被调查国家的企业间工资不平等份额都在增长，没有一个国家的这一份额在下降。我们还发现，在就业保护制度较强的国家，收入不平等和企业间不平等份额较低，增长也较弱；而当这些劳动力市场保护措施减弱时，不平等程度上升更快。我们的研究结果表明，与之前的认识相比，企业层面的重组和工作场所之间工资不平等的加剧，是导致收入不平等加剧的更核心因素。
