← Search

Journal of Labor Economics Vol. 14 No. 1 1996

The Evolution of Wages in the United Kingdom: Evidence from Micro Data

Costas Meghir1,2; Edward Whitehouse

1 Institute for Fiscal Studies · 2 University College London

open access

Abstract

We use data on male employees from the U.K. Family Expenditure Survey for the years 1968-86 to investigate the behavior of wages over time and across cohorts. We find that differentials between manual workers and professional managerial ones are lower at labor market entry for younger cohorts but increasing faster with age in the 1980s than in the past. The returns to experience appear to be very low in the United Kingdom, particularly for manual and clerical workers, although the improved education of younger workers may partly explain this. Finally we show that individual wages in the United Kingdom are highly procyclical.

DOI
10.1086/209801
Volume
14
Issue
1
Pages
1-25
Language
en
Sources
openalex crossref

Cite