Spillovers from High-Skill Consumption to Low-Skill Labor Markets

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Spillovers from High-Skill Consumption to Low-Skill Labor Markets

Author Info

Francesca Mazzolari () (University of California, Irvine and IZA)
Giuseppe Ragusa () (University of California, Irvine)

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Giuseppe Ragusa

Abstract

Census data show that since 1980 low-skill workers in the United States have been increasingly employed in the provision of non-tradeable time-intensive services - such as food preparation and cleaning - that can be broadly thought as substitutes of home production activities. Meanwhile the wage gap between this sector and the rest of the economy has shrunk. If skilled workers, with their high opportunity cost of time, demand more of these time-intensive services, then wage gains at the top of the wage distribution (such as those observed in the last three decades) are expected to raise the consumption of these services, consistent with these stylized facts. Using both consumption expenditure data and city-level data on employment and wages of workers of different skills, we provide several pieces of evidence in favor of these demand shifts, and we argue that they provide a viable explanation for the growth in wages at the bottom quantiles observed in the last fifteen years.

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Paper provided by Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in its series IZA Discussion Papers with number 3048.

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Length: 47 pages
Date of creation: Sep 2007
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp3048

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
J21 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure
J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply
J23 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Demand
J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

NEP-ALL-2007-10-06 (All new papers)
NEP-BEC-2007-10-06 (Business Economics)
NEP-LAB-2007-10-06 (Labour Economics)
NEP-URE-2007-10-06 (Urban & Real Estate Economics)

Cited by:
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Edward L. Glaeser & Matthew G. Resseger & Kristina Tobio, 2008. "Urban Inequality," NBER Working Papers 14419, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)

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