Autor, David H.; Katz, Lawrence F.; Kearney, Melissa S. - 2021
During the early 1980s, earnings inequality in the U.S. labor market rose relatively uniformly throughout the wage … distribution. But this uniformity gave way to a significant divergence starting in 1987, with upper-tail (90/50) inequality rising … steadily and lower tail (50/10) inequality either flattening or compressing for the next 16 years (1987 to 2003). This paper …