The paper documents the changes in the size of the wage distribution in Russia over the period 1994–2003. Developments in wage inequality varied a lot by sub-periods: overall wage inequality stayed stable in 1994–1996, then it jumped following the 1998 crisis and remained at higher levels for three years. In 2002 the trend reversed again and in the course of a single year wage inequality fell back to the level of the mid-1990s. We find that evolution wage inequality was largely driven by changes in the upper end of the wage distribution. Decomposition of wage inequality by population sub-groups shows that inequality has been higher for men, younger and low-educated workers, and rural inhabitants. The structure of inequality did not change much over the period from 1994 to 2003. Demographic variables (mainly gender and region) explain the largest proportion of wage dispersion (over 40% of the explained variation and 15% of total variation). Nearly equivalent is the contribution of firm characteristics with industry affiliation of employer playing the leading role. Our results show that returns to education continued to rise at all percentiles of the wage distribution converging at the level of about 8–9% of wage increase for an additional year of schooling.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
file. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by EERC Research Network, Russia and CIS in its series EERC Working Paper Series with number
06-03e.
Length: Date of creation: 26 Apr 2006 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:eer:wpalle:06-03e
Contact details of provider: Postal: EERC Research Network, Russia and CIS, 47, Nakhimovsky pr-t, suite 919, Moscow, 117418 Russia Phone: +7(095)332-4415 Fax: +1(202)478-1968 Web page: http://www.eerc.ru
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: