WAGE INEQUALITY IN RUSSIA: REGIONAL AND OCCUPATIONAL ASPECTS

Abstract

The article considers results of the study on wage inequality in Russia, which was based on data from a sample survey of companies by categories of personnel and occupational groups of workers, conducted by Federal State Statistics Service in October 2011 and 2013.

The authors compared wage inequality in Russia and other countries. The wage inequality within regions and occupational groups was analyzed in order to estimate the contributions of regional and occupational wage inequality into the total wage inequality. The authors identified the regions with the highest and lowest rates of intra-regional wage inequality and revealed the occupational groups with the highest and lowest rates of intra-group wage inequality.

Decomposition of the entropy indexes showed the effect of various socio-demographic factors and the factors characterizing the employment of workers on the wage inequality. It was shown that the wage inequality a worker faced within his occupational group on the local labor market is 30-50% less than the total wage inequality in Russia. In the meantime age, gender and type of ownership of the enterprise make a relatively small contribution. Such factors as the type of economic activity of the enterprise, education and employment of the employee group made a more significant contribution. Additionally, the analysis shows that all of these factors explain better the differentiation of the distribution in the lower wages, while in the upper part of distribution series their influence was not so significant.

Finally, the authors proposed solutions to reduce the differentiation of wages in Russia.