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?:abstract
  • There has been a scholarly consensus that greater union strength translates into lower levels of wage inequality. However, recent evidence indicates that this union effect disappeared in the 1990s. We argue that unions still reduce wage inequality, but that their effect is dependent on the type of workers that are actually unionized. Using survey data, we construct a variable that measures the proportion of union members that are unskilled manual workers in twenty wealthy democracies. We find that as the share of these workers rises, wage inequality falls, regardless of the level of union density, the level of union coverage, or whether a country has liberal, mixed, or coordinated market economy. However, the proportion of union members that are unskilled manual workers has no effect on wage inequality when wage bargaining institutions are decentralized, likely because such workers are unable to extract wage gains from their more skilled and higher paid union brethren in such an institutional context. These results suggest that the unitary actor assumption, so commonly employed by scholars to explain union effects on political and socio-economic outcomes, is misplaced; and that even though politicians may be more responsive to the policy preferences of the wealthy, poorer individuals can achieve relative economic gains when properly organized. (xsd:string)
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  • First published online: May 11, 2016, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rssm.2016.05.001. (EVS) (xsd:string)
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  • EVS-Bibliography (xsd:string)
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  • 2016 (xsd:gyear)
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  • 2016 (xsd:gyear)
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  • 10.1016/j.rssm.2016.05.001 ()
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  • 1 (xsd:string)
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  • 0276-5624 ()
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  • They may not have the skills, but they have the desire: Why the skill composition of trade unions matters for wage inequality (xsd:string)
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  • article (xsd:string)
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  • Bibsonomy (xsd:string)
  • In Research in Social Stratification and Mobility , 45, 1-12, 2016 (xsd:string)
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  • European Values Study (EVS) (xsd:string)
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  • 2016 (xsd:string)
  • EVS (xsd:string)
  • EVS1981 (xsd:string)
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  • 12 (xsd:string)
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  • 45 (xsd:string)