Changes in the Distribution of Workers' Annual Earnings Between 1979 and 2007. Real Annual Earnings at Selected Percentiles of Men's and Women's Earnings Distributions

摘要

Understanding how the annual earnings of workers have changed over time is integral to projecting possible changes in such earnings in the future and considering government tax and spending policies that affect workers. This Congressional Budget Office (CBO) paper documents changes in workers annual earnings; however, it does not delve deeply into the causes of those changes or the possible implications for government policy. The paper first describes changes between 1979 and 2007 in the annual (inflation-adjusted) earnings of workers ages 25 to 54. CBO found that men with relatively low, median, and relatively high earnings (specifically, men at the 10th, 50th, and 90th percentiles of their earnings distribution) earned more than women in the same position of their own earnings distribution in 2007, and that those differences were smaller in 2007 than in 1979.