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Declining Inequality and Persistent Inequality Structures

By on June 10, 2026 in Articles

Soohyun Roh, Nathan Wilmers

Sociological Science June 10, 2026
10.15195/v13.a24

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Prior research finds that rising labor market inequality in the United States was abetted by structural changes in the economy: a consolidation of occupation and organizational bases of advantage; rising within-job inequality; and declining pay and employment in middle-earning jobs. In this article, we revisit these structural changes by asking whether they have been reversed as labor market inequality fell over the last decade. Drawing on restricted-use microdata from the Occupational Employment and Wages Statistics, we find that declining inequality is due to declining inequality in occupation premiums. There has been only a small reversal of consolidation and no decrease in inequality within jobs. Low-wage jobs gained on shrinking middle-earning occupations, further eroding union, manufacturing, and public sector wage premiums. These findings demonstrate a novel configuration of labor market inequality, in which pay rose in low-wage jobs, but underlying inequality structures in the economy persisted.

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.


Soohyun Roh: Sloan School of Management, MIT
E-mail: rohs@mit.edu.

Nathan Wilmers: Sloan School of Management, MIT
E-mail: wilmers@mit.edu.

Acknowledgments: Thank you for very helpful comments from the MIT Applied Microeconomics Seminar, University of Maryland Strategy Seminar, NYU Sociology Colloquium, Columbia Center for Wealth and Inequality Seminar, Russell Sage Foundation Visiting Scholar Seminar, Frankfurt School of Finance and Management Seminar, and Stockholm University Department of Economics Seminar. This research was conducted with restricted access to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the BLS or the US government. This research was funded by MIT Sloan. Please direct correspondence to wilmers@mit.edu.


Supplemental Materials

Reproducibility Package: Full replication code is available at https://osf.io/8tbwh. In June 2025, the BLS suspended researcher access to its restricted data. As such, data for the bulk of this analysis are no longer accessible for replication (or to Roh and Wilmers). If the BLS restarts its data access program, then data will be accessible through the application as a visiting researcher.


  • Citation: Roh, Soohyun, Nathan Wilmers. 2026. “Declining Inequality and Persistent Inequality Structures” Sociological Science 13: 614-644.
  • Received: October 16, 2025
  • Accepted: February 26, 2026
  • Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Cristobal Young
  • DOI: 10.15195/v13.a24


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The Sources of Life Chances: Does Education, Class Category, Occupation, or Short-Term Earnings Predict 20-Year Long-Term Earnings?

By on March 21, 2018 in Articles

ChangHwan Kim, Christopher R. Tamborini, Arthur Sakamoto

Sociological Science, March 21, 2018
DOI 10.15195/v5.a9

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In sociological studies of economic stratification and intergenerational mobility, occupation has long been presumed to reflect lifetime earnings better than do short-term earnings. However, few studies have actually tested this critical assumption. In this study, we investigate the cross-sectional determinants of 20-year accumulated earnings using data that match respondents in the Survey of Income and Program Participation to their longitudinal earnings records based on administrative tax information from 1990 to 2009. Fit statistics of regression models are estimated to assess the predictive power of various proxy variables, including occupation, education, and short-term earnings, on cumulative earnings over the 20-year time period. Contrary to the popular assumption in sociology, our results find that cross-sectional earnings have greater predictive power on long-term earnings than occupation-based class classifications, including three-digit detailed occupations for both men and women. The model based on educational attainment, including field of study, has slightly better fit than models based on one-digit occupation or the Erikson, Goldthorpe, and Portocarero class scheme. We discuss the theoretical implications of these findings for the sociology of stratification and intergenerational mobility.

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

ChangHwan Kim: Department of Sociology, University of Kansas
Email: chkim@ku.edu

Christopher R. Tamborini: Office of Retirement Policy, U.S. Social Security Administration
Email: chris.tamborini@ssa.gov

Arthur Sakamoto: Department of Sociology, Texas A&M University
Email: asakamoto@tamu.edu

Acknowledgements: The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not represent the views of the Social Security Administration (SSA). Access to SSA data linked to Census Bureau survey data is subject to restrictions imposed by Title 13 of the U.S. Code. The data are accessible at a secured site such as the Federal Statistical Research Data Centers (https://www.census.gov/fsrdc) and must undergo disclosure review before their release. For researchers with access to these data, the computer programs used in this analysis are available upon request.

  • Citation: Kim, ChangHwan, Christopher R. Tamborini, and Arthur Sakamoto. 2018. “The Sources of Life Chances: Does Education, Class Category, Occupation or Short-Term Earnings Predict 20-Year Long-Term Earnings?” Sociological Science 5:206-233.
  • Received: December 19, 2017
  • Accepted: February 6, 2018
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Kim Weeden
  • DOI: 10.15195/v5.a9

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