The State of Working Pennsylvania 2004 - The Keystone Research ...

The State of Working Pennsylvania 2004 23
this educational category consistently received the largest percentage raises of any group of women
or men during all periods since 1995. Their wages rose by 16 percent from 1995-2003, by 8 percent
from 2000-2003, and by nearly 5 percent from 2002-2003.
Both men and women at the educational extremes generally had wage losses or relatively small wage
gains in recent years. From 2002-2003
men without high school diplomas saw
their wages fall by nearly 3 percent,
while women in this educational
category took wage cuts of more than
2 percent. Men with postgraduate
education suffered a wage decline of
more than 7 percent from 2002-2003,
while their female counterparts took a
wage cut of nearly 4 percent.
These recent changes have not yet had
much effect on educational wage gaps,
which remain much greater than they
were in the 1970s and 1980s. For
example, men with postgraduate schooling earned 2.9 times as much as those with no high school
diploma in 2003, up from 1.5 times as much in 1979 and twice as much in 1989. Women with
postgraduate schooling earned 2.9 times as much as those with no high school diploma in 2003, up
from 1.9 times as much in 1979 and 2.4 times as much in 1989.
Wage Gap Between Top and Bottom Narrows Slightly
Wage progress for working people means not only decent wage increases for typical workers but
also a narrowing of the gap between top and bottom earners. To assess Pennsylvania’s progress in
reducing wage inequality we examine the wages of high-wage earners (defined here as those who earn
more than 90 percent of all workers and less than the other 10 percent) and low-wage earners (those
who earn more than 10 percent of all workers and less than the other 90 percent).
Table 6 shows that wage inequality in Pennsylvania—measured by the ratio of the wages of high
wage-earners to those of low wage-earners—grew dramatically during the 1980s and early 1990s,
changed very little from 1995-2000, rose to a new high in 2002, and then fell back to just above its
1995 level in 2003.
In 1979 high-wage earners earned 335 percent of what their low-wage counterparts earned. This
wage gap increased to 424 percent in 1995 and 431 percent in 2002 before falling back to 426
percent in 2003. The wage gap in the nation as a whole showed a similar pattern except that
it fell from 1995-2000 (when Pennsylvania’s gap continued to grow) and rose in 2003 (when
Pennsylvania’s gap narrowed).
The increase in wage inequality in Pennsylvania during the 1980s came about because high-wage
earners received raises while moderately low-wage earners took wage cuts. From 1979-1989 highwage
earners in Pennsylvania received a raise of 94 cents per hour while low-wage earners’ wages fell
by 90 cents per hour.