Abstract
PurposeThis study aims to analyse the contribution of the expansion and diversification of higher education to Chile's increase in wage inequality from 1992 to 2000 and its subsequent decrease from 2000 to 2013.Design/methodology/approachThe wage equation for each year is estimated using data from the national household survey, Encuesta de Caracterización Socioeconómica Nacional (CASEN). Using the method proposed by Firpo et al. (2009), the evolution of wage changes is decomposed into composition and wage structure effects of each explanatory variable at different points of the wage distribution.FindingsThe results show that the positive composition effect of higher education, derived from the increasing share of both workers with university degrees and those with vocational degrees, is substantially larger at the upper quantiles and exceeds the negative wage structure effect, thereby contributing to increasing wage inequality from 1992 to 2000. By contrast, the negative wage structure effect of higher education, primarily derived from the decreasing return to university degrees, is substantially larger at the upper quantiles and exceeds the positive composition effect, thereby contributing to decreasing wage inequality from 2000 to 2013.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the literature by showing that the expansion of higher education increased inequality in the 1990s and decreased it in the 2000s while the increasing supply of workers with vocational degrees decreased wage premiums for university degrees in the latter period.
Subject
General Economics, Econometrics and Finance
Reference37 articles.
1. Inequality, poverty, and development;Journal of Development Economics,1976
2. Could an increase in education raise income inequality? Evidence for Latin America;Latin American Journal of Economics,2014
3. Wage discrimination: reduced form and structural estimates;Journal of Human Resources,1973
4. As higher education expands, is it contributing to greater inequality?;National Institute Economic Review,2011
Cited by
5 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献