Return to Education and Income Inequality in Europe and the US

In this paper we study the relationship between wage inequality and education in 13 OECD countries over the period 1985-2005 using the Luxembourgh Income Study (LIS) data. Our results show a great deal of heterogeneity in the patterns of the rate-of-return estimates across countries. On the other hand, our results confi rm the fi nding of a general increase in wage inequality. As for the correlation between wage premia and wage inequality, the results show a positive but weak correlation between the estimates of the education return and the Gini index and between the convexity of wage premia and wage inequality. The results show that the increase in wage inequality in the countries considered can only partially be accounted for by observable characteristics such as education and educational premia; i.e., it is largely residual in its nature