What Are the Causes of Rising Wage Inequality in the United States?

These developments with respect to the structure of earnings have occurred during a twenty-year period in which, depending on which price index is utilized, the average level of real wages has been either constant or falling slightly. Thus, gains for one group of workers (college graduates, women, persons in their forties and fifties, and those in the highest percentiles of their relevant wage distributions) may appear to the public to come at the expense of other groups (that is, the outcome of some sort of zero per capita sum game). The situation has spurred all sorts of policy proposals, ranging from import restrictions to a major increase in government training programs. D