Skill Biased Technological Change and Rising Wage Inequality: Some Problems and Puzzles / David Card, John E. DiNardo.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Card, David.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

DiNardo, John E.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w8769.

NBER working paper series no. w8769

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Other Title:

Skill Biased Technological Change and Rising Wage Inequality

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2002.

Summary:

The rise in wage inequality in the U.S. labor market during the 1980s is usually attributed to skill-biased technical change (SBTC), associated with the development of personal computers and related information technologies. We review the evidence in favor of this hypothesis, focusing on the implications of SBTC for economy-wide trends in wage inequality, and for the evolution of wage differentials between various groups. A fundamental problem for the SBTC hypothesis is that wage inequality stabilized in the 1990s, despite continuing advances in computer technology. SBTC also fails to explain the closing of the gender gap, the stability of the racial wage gap, and the dramatic rise in education-related wage gaps for younger versus older workers. We conclude that the SBTC hypothesis is not very helpful in understanding the myriad shifts in the structure of wages that have occurred over the past three decades.

Notes:

Print version record

February 2002.