American Economic Review Vol. 89 No. 2 1999
Why Do Different Wage Series Tell Different Stories?
Abstract
The average wage is a key aspect of economic well-being in a society. Several alternative wage measures based upon official government statistics are available to analysts. Although these series always have differed in their relative levels, since the mid-1970's their trends have diverged markedly. This paper, which summarizes and updates our earlier work (Abraham et al., 1998), has several goals: to describe several commonly used hourly wage series; to characterize differences in their trends; and to evaluate alternative explanations for these differences.
- DOI
- 10.1257/aer.89.2.34
- Volume
- 89
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 34-39
- Language
- en
- Sources
- bibtex:phds-export.bib crossref openalex