This paper studies class discrimination and meritocracy in the Chilean labor market. Employing a dataset rich in productivity and class measures, we find that upper-class professionals earn approximately 50 per cent more than those raised in lower socioeconomic backgrounds. This gap is unrelated to differences in academic performance at university, second language proficiency, postgraduate studies, schools’ academic quality, geographic origin and other standard controls, which suggests some employer discrimination. This gap is larger than gaps reported elsewhere for gender, race and physical appearance. Meritocracy is modest, as the effect of socioeconomic background on earnings outweighs that of academic performance at university.
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Article provided by University of Chile, Department of Economics in its journal Estudios de Economia.
Volume (Year): 31 (2004) Issue (Month): 2 Year 2004 (December) Pages: 113-132 Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML
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Find related papers by JEL classification: J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials J70 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - General
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