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Education and Self-Employment: Changes in Earnings and Wealth Inequality

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  • Yaz Terajima

Abstract

The author quantitatively studies the interaction between education and occupation choices and its implication for the relationship between the changes in earnings inequality and the changes in wealth inequality in the United States over the 1983–2001 period. Among households whose head is a college graduate, the ratio of average household earnings between the self-employed and workers increased by 57 per cent. At the same time, the ratio of the average household wealth increased by 137 per cent. These findings suggest that both earnings and wealth inequality increased over this period. Did this change in relative average earnings lead to the change in relative average wealth? The author builds on a model of wealth distribution to include education and occupation choices, where earnings opportunities are dictated by productivity processes that are education-occupation specific. By calibrating these productivity processes to match the earnings observations separately for 1983 and 2001, the author quantitatively derives the model-implied changes in wealth inequality between different education-occupation groups of households. The results show that this exercise leads to one-third of the change in the relative average wealth between college self-employed and college worker households.

Suggested Citation

  • Yaz Terajima, 2006. "Education and Self-Employment: Changes in Earnings and Wealth Inequality," Staff Working Papers 06-40, Bank of Canada.
    • Handle: RePEc:bca:bocawp:06-40
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    Cited by:

    1. Covas Francisco & Fujita Shigeru, 2011. "Private Equity Premium and Aggregate Uncertainty in a Model of Uninsurable Investment Risk," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 11(1), pages 1-36, July.
    2. Akyol, Ahmet & Athreya, Kartik, 2011. "Credit and self-employment," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 363-385, March.
    3. Meh, Césaire A., 2008. "Business risk, credit constraints, and corporate taxation," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 32(9), pages 2971-3008, September.
    4. Noh-Sun Kwark & Eunseong Ma, 2016. "Entrepreneurship and Income Distribution Dynamics: Why Are Top Income Earners Unaffected by Business Cycles?," Working Papers 1608, Nam Duck-Woo Economic Research Institute, Sogang University (Former Research Institute for Market Economy).
    5. Francisco Covas & Shigeru Fujita, 2007. "Private risk premium and aggregate uncertainty in the model of uninsurable investment risk," Working Papers 07-30, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    6. Jason M. DeBacker & Bradley T. Heim & Vasia Panousi & Shanthi Ramnath & Ivan Vidangos, 2012. "The properties of income risk in privately held businesses," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2012-69, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    7. Vincenzo Quadrini, 2009. "Entrepreneurship in macroeconomics," Annals of Finance, Springer, vol. 5(3), pages 295-311, June.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Economic models; Labour markets;

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • J23 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Demand

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