Wage Inequality in Turkey: What Changed During 1994 - 2011

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate the evolution of male wage inequality from 1994 to 2011 in Turkey. The quantile regression method and OLS techniques are applied on Household Budget Survey data to estimate the extended Mincerian human capital earnings equation in order to analyze the changes in the wage distribution between these years. The results reveal that education is one of the crucial parameters that affect the wage inequality in Turkey. Within wage inequality among university graduates has increased for high to medium spreads for the successive almost 10 year periods. In addition, unionization also plays significant role on wage level in 2002 and 2011. In 2002, the return of being union membership is getting larger moving into higher tails of the wage distribution. On the other hand, the highest return of being a union membership is achieved at the lower tails of the distribution in 2011. Furthermore, the effects of experience, age, the size of the companies, public sector, geographic location variables on wage inequality are also discussed in this study.

An empirical analysis of gentrification in Istanbul

“…Indeed, an increase in the growth of people holding college degree further tells us something about changing income levels for the districts. The mean hourly wage for male university graduates in 2011 was calculated as 11.045 TL, while for high school graduates, this decreased to 5.280 TL, and further decreased to 4.369 TL for primary school graduates in Turkey (the wage ratio for skilled and unskilled labor for women is also similar to men; see (Özbay Daş & Dogruel, 2017). As already stated above, Brummet and Reed (2019, p. 9) formulate gentrification as “an increase in college‐educated individuals' demand for housing in initially low income, central city neighbourhoods.” Thus, it is highly like that a change in the composition of people in terms of education across districts would reveal how skilled and high income groups have moved in the city centre between 2008 and 2017.…”