US inequality since 1970 grew mostly within rather than between industries

Evidence

Because earnings inequality measures are not available at the firm level, we test our hypotheses at the industry level. Given that the increase in income inequality in the past three decades occurred mostly within rather than between industries ðMorgan and Tang 2007; Kim and Sakamoto 2008Þ, industry is a sensible unit for an institutional analysis of income inequality. Organizational studies have repeatedly demonstrated that there is similarity among organizations within the same industry, reflecting both market and institutional mechanisms. We treat industry as a technical and normative field that influences firm behavior. There is substantial evidence indicating the strong presence of industry field effects in terms of a firm’s human resource practices around gender and race ðSkaggs 2008; Hirsh 2009; McTague, Stainback, and Tomaskovic-Devey 2009; Kelly et al. 2010Þ. Thus, an industrial investigation is likely to provide informative estimates of firmlevel processes. — Ken-Hou Lin & Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, Financialization and U.S. Income…, 63

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to within-vs-between decomposition debates (wage structure literature, Autor-Katz-Kearney); the reader’s earlier across-industry intuition is thereby qualified. — connects to: Most earnings inequality growth occurred within industries, not between them. — Ken-Hou Lin & Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, Financialization and U.S. Income…, 81; Structural inequality has redistributed trillions from American workers to the richest — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 84

Related

• Most earnings inequality growth occurred within industries, not between them. (similarity 0.87)
• Declining industries show rising earnings inequality (similarity 0.85)
• Financialization raises earnings inequality across most US industries (similarity 0.84)
• Inequality dimensions reflect one institutional shift toward financialization (similarity 0.82)
• Deunionization still leaves much wage inequality unexplained, pointing to financialization (similarity 0.81)
• Financialization independently explains over half of labor’s falling income share since 1970. (similarity 0.80)
• Internal work organization shapes income inequality independent of individual differences (similarity 0.80)
• Workforce demographics and market concentration shape income distribution independently (similarity 0.80)
• Financialization trajectories diverged across industries after 1997 (similarity 0.80)
• Financialization drives earnings inequality nearly as much as declining unionization (similarity 0.79)
• Financial-sector workers’ pay since the 1980s far outstripped national averages, driving inequality. (similarity 0.79)
• Structural inequality has redistributed trillions from American workers to the richest (similarity 0.79)
• Prior research linked financialization to inequality mostly indirectly, not causally. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Most earnings inequality growth occurred within industries, not between them. #corroborates (1.00) — Ken-Hou Lin & Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, Financialization and U.S. Income…, 81