The Great Separation: Top Earner Segregation at Work in Advanced Capitalist Economies
American Journal of Sociology
2024
Segregation
Canada
Czechia
Denmark
France
Germany
Hungary
Japan
Netherlands
Norway
South Korea
Spain
Sweden

Abstract

Earnings segregation at work is an understudied topic in social science, despite the workplace being an everyday nexus for social mixing, cohesion, contact, claims making, and resource exchange. It is all the more urgent to study as workplaces, in the last decades, have undergone profound reorganizations that could affect the magnitude and evolution of earnings segregation. Analyzing linked employer-employee panel administrative databases, the authors estimate the evolving isolation of higher earners from other employees in 12 countries: Canada, Czechia, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, South Korea, and Sweden. They find in almost all countries a growing workplace isolation of top earners and dramatically declining exposure of top earners to bottom earners. The authors perform a first exploration of the main factors accounting for this trend: deindustrialization, workplace downsizing, restructuring (including layoffs, outsourcing, offshoring, and subcontracting), and digitalization contribute substantially to the increase in top earner segregation. These findings open up a future research agenda on the causes and consequences of top earner segregation.

Contributors

Olivier Godechot
Sciences Po
Donald Tomaskovic-Devey
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
István Boza
HUN-REN KRTK Institute of Economics
Lasse Folke Henriksen
Copenhagen Business School
Are Skeie Hermansen
University of Oslo
Feng Hou
University of Toronto
Jiwook Jung
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Naomi Kodama
Meiji Gakuin University
Alena Křížková
Czech Academy of Sciences
Zoltán Lippényi
University of Groningen
Silvia Melzer
Eunmi Mun
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Halil Sabanci
Frankfurt School of Finance & Management
Dustin Avent-Holt
Augusta University
Nina Bandelj
University of California, Irvine
Marta Elvira
IESE Business School
Aleksandra Kanjuo-Mrčela
University of Ljubljana
Joseph King
Andrew Penner
University of California, Irvine
Trond Petersen
University of California, Berkeley
Andreja Poje
University of Ljubljana
Anthony Rainey
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Mirna Safi
Sciences Po
Max Thaning
University of Stockholm
Matthew Soener
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
David Cort
University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Other Contributors

Key Findings

Top earners are increasingly working together. This 30-year, 12-country trend is fueled by deindustrialization, workplace restructuring, and digitalization.