Taxation of Human Capital and Wage Inequality: A Cross-Country Analysis

57 Pages Posted: 30 May 2017

See all articles by Fatih Guvenen

Fatih Guvenen

University of Minnesota - Department of Economics; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Burhanettin Kuruscu

University of Toronto - Department of Economics

Serdar Ozkan

Federal Reserve Banks - Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; University of Toronto

Multiple version iconThere are 2 versions of this paper

Date Written: 2013

Abstract

Wage inequality has been significantly higher in the United States than in continental European countries (CEU) since the 1970s. Moreover, this inequality gap has further widened during this period as the US has experienced a large increase in wage inequality, whereas the CEU has seen only modest changes. This paper studies the role of labor income tax policies for understanding these facts, focusing on male workers. We construct a life cycle model in which individuals decide each period whether to go to school, work, or stay non-employed. Individuals can accumulate skills either in school or while working. Wage inequality arises from differences across individuals in their ability to learn new skills as well as from idiosyncratic shocks. Progressive taxation compresses the (after-tax) wage structure, thereby distorting the incentives to accumulate human capital, in turn reducing the cross-sectional dispersion of (before-tax) wages. Consistent with the model, we empirically document that countries with more progressive labor income tax schedules have (i) significantly lower before-tax wage inequality at different points in time and (ii) experienced a smaller rise in wage inequality since the early 1980s. We then study the calibrated model and find that these policies can account for half of the difference between the US and the CEU in overall wage inequality and 84% of the difference in inequality at the upper end (log 90-50 differential). In a two-country comparison between the US and Germany, the combination of skill-biased technical change and changing progressivity of tax schedules explains all the difference between the evolution of inequality in these two countries since the early 1980s.

Suggested Citation

Guvenen, Fatih and Kuruscu, Burhanettin and Ozkan, Serdar, Taxation of Human Capital and Wage Inequality: A Cross-Country Analysis (2013). FEDS Working Paper No. 2013-20, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2976717

Fatih Guvenen (Contact Author)

University of Minnesota - Department of Economics ( email )

Minneapolis, MN 55455
United States

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) ( email )

1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States

Burhanettin Kuruscu

University of Toronto - Department of Economics ( email )

105 St George Street
Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G8
Canada

HOME PAGE: http://https://sites.google.com/site/bkuruscu

Serdar Ozkan

Federal Reserve Banks - Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis ( email )

411 Locust St
Saint Louis, MO 63011
United States

University of Toronto ( email )

105 St George Street
Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G8
Canada

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