(1480) FORMAL EDUCATION AS A PROXY OF WORKERS' SKILLS: WAGE INEQUALITY IN THE PIGS COUNTRIES

摘要

The average level of formal education is used to rank economic activities in high-, middle- and lowskills with the aim of analysing the changes that have occurred in the employment composition (i.e., job polarisation rather upgrading of occupations or neither of two) in 2005-2013 in the Mediterranean Europe (Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain) and their potential relationships with the changes in wage distribution and inequality. Using EU-SILC data and through the Recentered Influence Function (RIF) regression on Gini index, Italy is compared with each of the other three countries concerned to evaluate the spatial gaps in wage inequality and exploring their leading determinants (i.e., the relationship between personal education and professional career opportunity and the effects on wage inequality). The procedure allows estimating how much of the spatial gap is accounted for by the dissimilar endowments in employees' characteristics (composition effect) rather than the different capability of each country's labour market to transform individuals' skills into earnings (wage structure). While Greece and Portugal are clearly characterized by job polarisation and upgrading, respectively, none of the two phenomena visibly prevails in Italy and Spain. Employees' endowments play a key role to explain the lower inequality in Italy when compared to the Spain (with a more hybrid structure), while the country's ability to promote employment has a greater weight in Italy vs. Greece (with a more polarised structure) and Portugal (upgrading).