Increasing Earnings Inequality in Faculty Labor Markets

Abstract

From the late 1980s to the late 1990s, U.S. college and university faculty experienced increasing earnings inequality. This rising dispersion in earnings is the result of both increasing earnings inequality between institutions, even within sectors of higher education, and within institutions, even conditional on rank, tenure status, demographic characteristics, and field of specialization. Existing studies that only examined between institution differences in average earnings underestimate both the level and increase in earnings inequality.