TY  - JOUR
AU  - Lemieux,Thomas
TI  - Post-Secondary Education and Increasing Wage Inequality
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 12077
PY  - 2006
Y2  - March 2006
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12077
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12077.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Thomas Lemieux
Department of Economics
University of British Columbia
#997-1873 East Mall
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z1
CANADA
Tel: 604/822-2092
Fax: 604/822-5915
E-Mail: thomas.lemieux@ubc.ca
AB  - The paper presents descriptive evidence from quantile regressions and more "structural" estimates from a human capital model with heterogenous returns to show that most of the increase in wage inequality between 1973 and 2005 is due to a dramatic increase in the return to post-secondary education. The model with heterogenous returns also helps explain why both the relative wages and the within-group dispersion among highly-educated workers have increased in tandem over time. These findings add to the growing evidence that, far from being ubiquitous, changes in wage inequality are increasingly concentrated in the very top end of the wage distribution.
ER  -