Working Paper Series no. 370: Changes In Wage Inequality In France: The Impact Of Composition Effects (in French)

Abstract

This paper investigates the recent changes in the French wage structure from 1990 to 2008. To do so, we disentangle the impact of changes in employment probability, changes in the levels of education and experience and changes in the price of labor. Unlike other developped countries, we find that upper and lower tail inequality decline between the first and the last decile for male and female. The recent period thus could be described as a period of “great compression” of wages between the first and the last decile. As a result, the decline in education and experience returns has produced one of the most egalitarian wage structure ever observed in France since the 1960s.

Gregory Verdugo, Henri Fraisse and Guillaume Horny
March 2012

Classification JEL : J3, D3

Keywords : Wage Inequality, France