Graph of the Day: Why Does the U.S. Have Lower-Wage Jobs than Europe?
The folks at the Center for Economic and Policy Research have a new report out this week that provides an interesting perspective on the now hot-button issue of income inequality. According to John Schmitt, the report’s author, nearly a quarter of American workers were in low-wage jobs in 2009, a higher percentage than in any other rich, developed country. What’s more, the number of low-wage workers—defined as those earning less than two-thirds the national median hourly wage—has been rising in the United States for “at least three decades,” from around 20 percent in 1979 to nearly 30 percent in 2010.
Of course, a high incidence of low-wage jobs does not by itself indicate income inequality. If, as Schmitt points out, “low wage jobs act as a stepping stone to higher-paying work, then even a relatively high share of low-wage work may not be a serious social problem.” But that is no longer the case, at least in the United States. Even Republican lawmakers are acknowledging that social mobility in the U.S. has fallen behind much of the rest of the developed world, with low-wage work “a persistent and recurring state for many workers.”
But, you may ask, doesn’t the United States have a higher standard of living? Aren’t our low-wage earners still better off than their counterparts in Europe? Well, not really. Low-wage workers in the United States have no legal right to paid vacation, sick days or parental leave, not to mention the lowest incidence of employer-sponsored health insurance—54 percent of workers in the bottom wage quintile have no insurance at all. And though the U.S. does enjoy a high GDP per capita, the OECD data shows no association with a reduction in the share of low-wage workers. Comparing median household income yields the same result:
Stronger labor market institutions, like those in Europe, could certainly help reduce our high proportion of low-wage jobs. Collective bargaining, a higher minimum wage, employment protection legislation, and more rigorous enforcement of national labor laws would all raise wages for the quarter of Americans struggling with low wages and ever-lower social mobility.
America’s Rigid Class Structure
By Benjamin Landy
Social mobility in the United States has fallen as the country’s income distribution has grown more unequal, meaning that it is now less likely that children of the lower and middle classes will grow up to live better lives than their parents did. According to the Center for American Progress, children from low-income families in the United States now have only a 1 percent chance of reaching the top 5 percent of the income distribution, while the children of the rich have about a 22 percent chance. Children born into families in the middle quintile of the income distribution (the 40th-60th percentile) actually have a higher chance of ending up in a lower income bracket (39.5 percent) than a higher one (36.5 percent), while their chance of reaching the top fifth percentile is under 2 percent.
International comparisons show that along with Italy and the United Kingdom, which also have relatively rigid class structures, the United States ranks among the least socially mobile countries in the OECD, and has the highest income inequality to boot. This graph looks at various countries based on a measurement of intergenerational income elasticity in which a level of one indiciates that the average child’s eventual income will be the same as that of his or her parents, ranging to zero when there is no correlation between family background and adult earnings.
Source: OECD
Although the “American Dream” has long been a critical facet of our national identity, by international standards, the United States actually has an especially poor degree of intergenerational mobility - worse than France, Germany, Canada, and Australia, not to mention the “social” market economies of Sweden, Norway, and Finland.
The Center for American Progress also found that education, race, health and state of residence were the four key factors in determining to what degree economic status was transferred from parents to children, with race and education being particularly important. In the United States, African American children born into the bottom quartile are nearly twice as likely to remain in that position as their white peers, and four times less likely to advance into the top quartile.
Reposted from my Graph of the Day Series at Taking Note.
