In this article, I underline a less commonly acknowledged outcome of the neoliberal revolution. F... more In this article, I underline a less commonly acknowledged outcome of the neoliberal revolution. Following the shift from social protection to economic liberalism, in many rich countries workers' share of national income has declined and capitalists' share has increased. To better understand this link between neoliberalism and workers' share of national income, I develop a new political economy approach that stresses the importance of state policy, class organization, and organizational unity for determining how national income is distributed between workers and capitalists. I apply this conceptualization to the dynamics of labor's share in Israel, once a socialist economy with little inequality, which today has become one of the world's most unequal. A detailed account of three stages in the Israeli political economy characterized by distinct inequality outcomes and time-series equations estimating the changes in labor's share from 1955 to 2005 reveal that market-oriented state policies, workers' disorganization, and the growing fragmentation within organized labor led to a decline in labor's share during the current stage of liberal capitalism.
Unions are known to increase earnings and wage equality. Therefore, indications for recent union ... more Unions are known to increase earnings and wage equality. Therefore, indications for recent union revitalization provoke the question of what unions would do today were they to restore their union density and hence power to the level of the early 1980s (about 20%). This article presents wage estimates for 1983 to 2020, assuming a 20% union density from 1983 onward, revealing higher earnings and lower wage inequality. However, since union membership today typifies low-wage workers with weaker bargaining power than formerly, the benefits from restoring union density and power will likely be lower today than in the past.
This article exploits the unique consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak to examine whethe... more This article exploits the unique consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak to examine whether time constraints drive the unequal division of unpaid labor between dual-earner couples in Israel. Using the first wave of longitudinal household data that was collected in Israel since the outbreak of the pandemic, we focused on 325 dual-earner couples who stayed employed during the first lockdown. By employing OLS regressions, we examined the association between changes in employment hours and changes in unpaid labor for partnered men and women. Strong evidence was found for a gendered translation of the time constraints mechanism: A decrease in hours of paid work is related to an increase in hours of care for children among men and women, but time devoted to housework increased only among women. We conclude that time constraints that resulted from the dramatic effect of the first lockdown on paid and unpaid work in Israel did not significantly change the gender division of unpaid ho...
Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-wox-10.1177_0730888420941031 for Why Has Computerization Increase... more Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-wox-10.1177_0730888420941031 for Why Has Computerization Increased Wage Inequality? Information, Occupational Structural Power, and Wage Inequality by Tali Kristal in Work and Occupations
This article addresses an important question in the age of rapid spread of new computer technolog... more This article addresses an important question in the age of rapid spread of new computer technologies: how do institutions influence the computer wage premium? To identify institutional factors that account for differences in computers’ impact on wages, the authors estimate computer wage premiums for 20 countries classified into three national ‘varieties’ of capitalism and distinct forms of industrial relations and education systems. The analyses are based on unique international data from the Survey of Adult Skills, recently conducted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Results reveal that computer use at work is rewarded considerably higher in Liberal countries than in other countries—Nordic Coordinated countries above all. These results signify the centrality of coordinated markets, grounded in strong unions, centralized wage bargaining and publicly funded education and training, for lower computer wage gaps, hence for lower levels of wage inequality.
This article addresses an important trend in contemporary income inequality—a decline in labor’s ... more This article addresses an important trend in contemporary income inequality—a decline in labor’s share of national income and a rise in capitalists’ profits share. Since the late 1970s, labor’s share declined by 6 percent across the U.S. private sector. As I will show, this overall decline was due to a large decline (5 to 14 percent) in construction, manufacturing, and transportation combined with an increase, albeit small (2 to 5 percent), in labor’s share within finance and services industries. To explain the overall decline and the diverse trends across industries, I argue that the main factor leading to the decline in labor’s share was the erosion in workers’ positional power, and this erosion was partly an outcome of class-biased technological change, namely computerization that favored employers over most employees. I combine data from several sources to test for the independent effects of workers’ positional power indicators (i.e., unionization, capital concentration, import ...
This article returns to a classic question of political economy: the zero-sum conflict between ca... more This article returns to a classic question of political economy: the zero-sum conflict between capital and labor over the division of the national income pie. A detailed description of labor’s share of national income in 16 industrialized democracies from 1960 to 2005 uncovers two long-term trends: an increase in labor’s share in the aftermath of World War II, followed by a decrease since the early 1980s. I argue that the working class’s relative bargaining power explains the dynamics of labor’s share, and I model inter- and intra-class bargaining power in the economic, political, and global spheres. Time-series cross-section equations predicting the short- and long-term determinants of labor’s share support most of my theoretical arguments and the main findings are robust to alternative specifications. Results suggest that the common trend in the dynamics of labor’s share of national income is largely explained by indicators for working-class organizational power in the economic (i...
This paper analyzes gaps in the college graduation rates of third-generation Ashkenazim and Mizra... more This paper analyzes gaps in the college graduation rates of third-generation Ashkenazim and Mizrahim (the two major ethnic groups among Israeli Jews), in comparison to the same gaps among members of the second generation. The empirical analyses have been performed using a special file of the 1995 Israeli census which matched records of respondents to their parents in the 1983 Census, thereby allowing identification of the ethnicity of the third generation for a representative sample of men and women, 25-34 years of age in 1995, as well as the identification of persons of mixed ethnicity. The results suggest that the gaps between the two major ethnic groups are not smaller in the third generation than in the second generation. Persons of mixed ethnicity -- of both the second and third generations -- are located about midway between the two ethnic groups with respect to their college graduation rates. Much of the ethnic-based gap in college graduation is due to differences in family b...
This chapter underlines a relatively unfamiliar outcome of the neoliberal revolution. Following t... more This chapter underlines a relatively unfamiliar outcome of the neoliberal revolution. Following the shift from social protection to economic liberalism, in many rich countries workers’ share of national income has declined, and capitalists’ share has increased. To better understand this link between neoliberalism and workers’ share of national income, Kristal develops a new political economy approach that stresses the importance of state policy for determining how national income is distributed between workers and capitalists, and applies this conceptualization to the dynamics of labor’s share in Israel, once a socialist economy with little inequality, today one of the world’s most unequal.
The economic shutdown and national lockdown following the outbreak of COVID-19 have increased dem... more The economic shutdown and national lockdown following the outbreak of COVID-19 have increased demand for unpaid work at home, particularly among families with children, and reduced demand for paid work. Concurrently, the share of the workforce that has relocated its workplace to home has also increased. In this article, we examine the consequences of these processes for the allocation of time among paid work, housework, and care work for men and women in Israel. Using data on 2,027 Israeli adults whom we followed since the first week of March (before the spread of COVID-19), we focus on the effect of the second lockdown in Israel (in September) on the gender division of both paid and unpaid work. We find that as demand for housework caused by the lockdown increases, women—especially with children—increase their housework much more than men do, particularly when they work from home. The consequences of work from home and other flexible work arrangements for gender inequality within t...
This article offers a new account of rising inequality by providing a new explanation for the obs... more This article offers a new account of rising inequality by providing a new explanation for the observed correlation between computerization and earnings. The argument is that as computers transformed work into a more knowledge-intensive activity, occupations located at critical junctions of information flow have gained greater structural power, and thereby higher wages. Combining occupational measures for location in the information flow based on the Occupational Information Network with the 1979–2016 Current Population Surveys, the analyses reveal a rising wage premium for occupations with greater access to and control of information, independent of the spectrum of skills related to computerization.
Abstract Does the coronavirus pandemic level the gender inequality curve? Or does the economic do... more Abstract Does the coronavirus pandemic level the gender inequality curve? Or does the economic downturn following the coronavirus pandemic enhance gender inequality? To answer these questions, we collected data on Israeli men and women who were employed in the first week of March prior to the lockdown of the economy, and again in the last week of April (after the economy was shut down, but before it was reopened). We find that the consequences of the economic downturn following the coronavirus for gender equality are harsh, with women’s employment and income more severely affected than men’s.
In this article, I underline a less commonly acknowledged outcome of the neoliberal revolution. F... more In this article, I underline a less commonly acknowledged outcome of the neoliberal revolution. Following the shift from social protection to economic liberalism, in many rich countries workers' share of national income has declined and capitalists' share has increased. To better understand this link between neoliberalism and workers' share of national income, I develop a new political economy approach that stresses the importance of state policy, class organization, and organizational unity for determining how national income is distributed between workers and capitalists. I apply this conceptualization to the dynamics of labor's share in Israel, once a socialist economy with little inequality, which today has become one of the world's most unequal. A detailed account of three stages in the Israeli political economy characterized by distinct inequality outcomes and time-series equations estimating the changes in labor's share from 1955 to 2005 reveal that market-oriented state policies, workers' disorganization, and the growing fragmentation within organized labor led to a decline in labor's share during the current stage of liberal capitalism.
Unions are known to increase earnings and wage equality. Therefore, indications for recent union ... more Unions are known to increase earnings and wage equality. Therefore, indications for recent union revitalization provoke the question of what unions would do today were they to restore their union density and hence power to the level of the early 1980s (about 20%). This article presents wage estimates for 1983 to 2020, assuming a 20% union density from 1983 onward, revealing higher earnings and lower wage inequality. However, since union membership today typifies low-wage workers with weaker bargaining power than formerly, the benefits from restoring union density and power will likely be lower today than in the past.
This article exploits the unique consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak to examine whethe... more This article exploits the unique consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak to examine whether time constraints drive the unequal division of unpaid labor between dual-earner couples in Israel. Using the first wave of longitudinal household data that was collected in Israel since the outbreak of the pandemic, we focused on 325 dual-earner couples who stayed employed during the first lockdown. By employing OLS regressions, we examined the association between changes in employment hours and changes in unpaid labor for partnered men and women. Strong evidence was found for a gendered translation of the time constraints mechanism: A decrease in hours of paid work is related to an increase in hours of care for children among men and women, but time devoted to housework increased only among women. We conclude that time constraints that resulted from the dramatic effect of the first lockdown on paid and unpaid work in Israel did not significantly change the gender division of unpaid ho...
Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-wox-10.1177_0730888420941031 for Why Has Computerization Increase... more Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-wox-10.1177_0730888420941031 for Why Has Computerization Increased Wage Inequality? Information, Occupational Structural Power, and Wage Inequality by Tali Kristal in Work and Occupations
This article addresses an important question in the age of rapid spread of new computer technolog... more This article addresses an important question in the age of rapid spread of new computer technologies: how do institutions influence the computer wage premium? To identify institutional factors that account for differences in computers’ impact on wages, the authors estimate computer wage premiums for 20 countries classified into three national ‘varieties’ of capitalism and distinct forms of industrial relations and education systems. The analyses are based on unique international data from the Survey of Adult Skills, recently conducted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Results reveal that computer use at work is rewarded considerably higher in Liberal countries than in other countries—Nordic Coordinated countries above all. These results signify the centrality of coordinated markets, grounded in strong unions, centralized wage bargaining and publicly funded education and training, for lower computer wage gaps, hence for lower levels of wage inequality.
This article addresses an important trend in contemporary income inequality—a decline in labor’s ... more This article addresses an important trend in contemporary income inequality—a decline in labor’s share of national income and a rise in capitalists’ profits share. Since the late 1970s, labor’s share declined by 6 percent across the U.S. private sector. As I will show, this overall decline was due to a large decline (5 to 14 percent) in construction, manufacturing, and transportation combined with an increase, albeit small (2 to 5 percent), in labor’s share within finance and services industries. To explain the overall decline and the diverse trends across industries, I argue that the main factor leading to the decline in labor’s share was the erosion in workers’ positional power, and this erosion was partly an outcome of class-biased technological change, namely computerization that favored employers over most employees. I combine data from several sources to test for the independent effects of workers’ positional power indicators (i.e., unionization, capital concentration, import ...
This article returns to a classic question of political economy: the zero-sum conflict between ca... more This article returns to a classic question of political economy: the zero-sum conflict between capital and labor over the division of the national income pie. A detailed description of labor’s share of national income in 16 industrialized democracies from 1960 to 2005 uncovers two long-term trends: an increase in labor’s share in the aftermath of World War II, followed by a decrease since the early 1980s. I argue that the working class’s relative bargaining power explains the dynamics of labor’s share, and I model inter- and intra-class bargaining power in the economic, political, and global spheres. Time-series cross-section equations predicting the short- and long-term determinants of labor’s share support most of my theoretical arguments and the main findings are robust to alternative specifications. Results suggest that the common trend in the dynamics of labor’s share of national income is largely explained by indicators for working-class organizational power in the economic (i...
This paper analyzes gaps in the college graduation rates of third-generation Ashkenazim and Mizra... more This paper analyzes gaps in the college graduation rates of third-generation Ashkenazim and Mizrahim (the two major ethnic groups among Israeli Jews), in comparison to the same gaps among members of the second generation. The empirical analyses have been performed using a special file of the 1995 Israeli census which matched records of respondents to their parents in the 1983 Census, thereby allowing identification of the ethnicity of the third generation for a representative sample of men and women, 25-34 years of age in 1995, as well as the identification of persons of mixed ethnicity. The results suggest that the gaps between the two major ethnic groups are not smaller in the third generation than in the second generation. Persons of mixed ethnicity -- of both the second and third generations -- are located about midway between the two ethnic groups with respect to their college graduation rates. Much of the ethnic-based gap in college graduation is due to differences in family b...
This chapter underlines a relatively unfamiliar outcome of the neoliberal revolution. Following t... more This chapter underlines a relatively unfamiliar outcome of the neoliberal revolution. Following the shift from social protection to economic liberalism, in many rich countries workers’ share of national income has declined, and capitalists’ share has increased. To better understand this link between neoliberalism and workers’ share of national income, Kristal develops a new political economy approach that stresses the importance of state policy for determining how national income is distributed between workers and capitalists, and applies this conceptualization to the dynamics of labor’s share in Israel, once a socialist economy with little inequality, today one of the world’s most unequal.
The economic shutdown and national lockdown following the outbreak of COVID-19 have increased dem... more The economic shutdown and national lockdown following the outbreak of COVID-19 have increased demand for unpaid work at home, particularly among families with children, and reduced demand for paid work. Concurrently, the share of the workforce that has relocated its workplace to home has also increased. In this article, we examine the consequences of these processes for the allocation of time among paid work, housework, and care work for men and women in Israel. Using data on 2,027 Israeli adults whom we followed since the first week of March (before the spread of COVID-19), we focus on the effect of the second lockdown in Israel (in September) on the gender division of both paid and unpaid work. We find that as demand for housework caused by the lockdown increases, women—especially with children—increase their housework much more than men do, particularly when they work from home. The consequences of work from home and other flexible work arrangements for gender inequality within t...
This article offers a new account of rising inequality by providing a new explanation for the obs... more This article offers a new account of rising inequality by providing a new explanation for the observed correlation between computerization and earnings. The argument is that as computers transformed work into a more knowledge-intensive activity, occupations located at critical junctions of information flow have gained greater structural power, and thereby higher wages. Combining occupational measures for location in the information flow based on the Occupational Information Network with the 1979–2016 Current Population Surveys, the analyses reveal a rising wage premium for occupations with greater access to and control of information, independent of the spectrum of skills related to computerization.
Abstract Does the coronavirus pandemic level the gender inequality curve? Or does the economic do... more Abstract Does the coronavirus pandemic level the gender inequality curve? Or does the economic downturn following the coronavirus pandemic enhance gender inequality? To answer these questions, we collected data on Israeli men and women who were employed in the first week of March prior to the lockdown of the economy, and again in the last week of April (after the economy was shut down, but before it was reopened). We find that the consequences of the economic downturn following the coronavirus for gender equality are harsh, with women’s employment and income more severely affected than men’s.
This article aims to explain why inequality in fringe benefits has grown faster than wage inequal... more This article aims to explain why inequality in fringe benefits has grown faster than wage inequality over the past four decades. We depart from previous income inequality research by studying benefits in addition to wages, but also by focusing on workplaces as the main drivers of benefit determination. We advance the argument that benefits determination is more organizationally embedded than wages mainly because workplaces have greater ability and incentive to alter benefits. Consequently, workplace compensation practices, including type of employment relations, are more important for benefits than for wages. Longitudinal linked employer–job administrative data on wages and voluntary benefits costs from the Employer Costs for Employee Compensation (ECEC) allow us to test these arguments, as well as examine why benefit inequality has dramatically increased. Results from variance decomposition reveal that between- and within-establishment inequality is higher in benefits than in wages...
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2013: Vol. 60, Issue 1 by Tali Kristal
Papers by Tali Kristal