Educational Impacts and Rising Inequality in the Us
This study integrates two bodies of work to explore how changes in human capital have impacted the distribution of household permanent income. Introducing a human capital accumulation model, a framework is established - utilizing the special properties of the Gini coefficient - which maps changes in human capital into changes in the distribution of household permanent income. Using US data from the panel Study of Income Dynamics, the results indicate that changes in the level of and return to schooling are not major contributors to the recent rise in household permanent income inequality in the US.