Blue Collar Blues Is Trade to Blame for Rising US Income Inequality?

Robert Lawrence

ISBN 10: 0881324140 / ISBN 13: 9780881324143

Editore: The Peterson Institute For International Economics Jan 2008, 2008

Riguardo questo articolo

Neuware - What are the links between slow US real wage growth, increased earnings inequality and trade Lawrence deconstructs the gap between real blue-collar wages and labor productivity growth over the past quarter-century and estimates (a) how much of the gap is due to measurement issues and (b) how much higher these wages might have been if the distribution of income been kept constant. He also argues that while increased trade with developing countries may have played some part in causing greater wage inequality in the 1980s, surprisingly, over the past decade the impact has been too small to show up in aggregate wage data on inequality. Increases in income inequality and slow real wage growth since 2000 reflect strong profit growth. Increases in inequality over the past decade also have resulted from dramatic income gains for the top one percent of wage earners.

Codice articolo 9780881324143

Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: Blue Collar Blues Is Trade to Blame for Rising US Income Inequality?
• Editore: The Peterson Institute For International Economics Jan 2008
• Data di pubblicazione: 2008
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0881324140
• ISBN 13: 9780881324143
• Rilegatura: Taschenbuch
• Condizione: Neu
• Dimensioni: 228 L x 154 A x 6 P (millimetri) 228 millimetri di larghezza per 154 millimetri di altezza per 6 millimetri di profondità
• Peso: 178 grammi

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto

International trade accounts for only a small share of growing income inequality and labor-market displacement in the United States. Lawrence deconstructs the gap in real blue-collar wages and labor productivity growth between 1981 and 2006 and estimates how much higher these wages might have been had income growth been distributed proportionately and how much of the gap is due to measurement and technical factors about which little can be done.

While increased trade with developing countries may have played some part in causing greater inequality in the 1980s, surprisingly, over the past decade the impact of such trade on inequality has been relatively small. Many imports are no longer produced in the United States, and US goods and services that do compete with imports are not particularly intensive in unskilled labor. Rising income inequality and slow real wage growth since 2000 reflect strong profit growth, much of which may be cyclical, and dramatic income gains for the top 1 percent of wage earners, a development that is more closely related to asset-market performance and technological and institutional innovations rather than conventional trade in goods and services. The minor role of trade, therefore, suggests that any policy that focuses narrowly on trade to deal with wage inequality and job loss is likely to be ineffective. Instead, policymakers should (a) use the tax system to improve income distribution and (b) implement adjustment policies to deal more generally with worker and community dislocation.

Informazioni sull'autore

Nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Instute; Albert L. Williams Professor of Trade and Investment at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University; served as member of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers (1999); held the New Century Chair at the Brookings Institution; founded and edited the Brookings Trade Forum; and served as consultant to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the World Bank, the OECD, and UNCTAD.