{"title":"The increase in earnings inequality in Italy: The role and persistence of atypical contracts","authors":"Domenico Depalo, Salvatore Lattanzio","doi":"10.1111/roiw.12709","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This paper investigates the factors that shape earnings inequality, using administrative matched employer‐employee data from the Italian Social Security Institute (INPS), between 1990 and 2021. It reveals that inequality in annual earnings rose steadily over time according to various measures, such as the Gini index, the interquartile ranges, and the variance. When exploring the mechanisms behind such an increase, it shows that the rise in inequality is driven by the quantity of work, which varied heterogeneously across workers, as atypical contracts (e.g., part‐time and fixed‐term) became widespread in the economy. We compare these measures based on the annual compensation of workers with those based on full‐time equivalent weekly wages, which display a much less dispersed evolution over time, except during the double‐dip recession in 2008–2012. Finally, we document a large persistence, increasing over time, in disadvantaged positions both in the short‐ and in the long‐run.","PeriodicalId":47853,"journal":{"name":"Review of Income and Wealth","volume":"46 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9000,"publicationDate":"2024-07-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Review of Income and Wealth","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1111/roiw.12709","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This paper investigates the factors that shape earnings inequality, using administrative matched employer‐employee data from the Italian Social Security Institute (INPS), between 1990 and 2021. It reveals that inequality in annual earnings rose steadily over time according to various measures, such as the Gini index, the interquartile ranges, and the variance. When exploring the mechanisms behind such an increase, it shows that the rise in inequality is driven by the quantity of work, which varied heterogeneously across workers, as atypical contracts (e.g., part‐time and fixed‐term) became widespread in the economy. We compare these measures based on the annual compensation of workers with those based on full‐time equivalent weekly wages, which display a much less dispersed evolution over time, except during the double‐dip recession in 2008–2012. Finally, we document a large persistence, increasing over time, in disadvantaged positions both in the short‐ and in the long‐run.
期刊介绍:
The major objective of the Review of Income and Wealth is to advance knowledge on the definition, measurement and interpretation of national income, wealth and distribution. Among the issues covered are: - national and social accounting - microdata analyses of issues related to income and wealth and its distribution - the integration of micro and macro systems of economic, financial, and social statistics - international and intertemporal comparisons of income, wealth, inequality, poverty, well-being, and productivity - related problems of measurement and methodology