| The growth of income inequality has fast become one of the central concerns of American society. Household income inequality began to rise in the 1970s, with wage inequality following shortly thereafter, resulting in contemporary levels of inequality not seen since the early 20th century. While this growth has renewed interest in the causes and consequences of inequality, the nature of inequality growth presents a challenge to sociologists. A central component to this contemporary upswing is within-group inequality, or inequality of wages and income occurring among individuals and households who are otherwise similar on those characteristics which sociologists typically study, such as sex, race, educational attainment, household composition, and occupational characteristics. This implies that standard tools used by sociologists might not be able to detect the nuanced social mechanisms guiding inequality growth. This dissertation advances stratification research by critically examining the phenomenon of within-group inequality. It does so by incorporating structural and temporal characteristics of the individual life course and the social context into within-group inequality analysis. In total, this dissertation helps identify mechanisms influencing the growth of within-group inequality as well as critically examining previous explanations of within-group inequality.;This dissertation proceeds in three analyses. First, I examine within-group inequality in a longitudinal framework following individuals over time. I find that within-group inequality has grown across birth cohorts through the baby boom but has slowed in growth since. Importantly, I find that much of within-group inequality is due to the characteristics that individuals bring into their careers. Second, I examine how within-group inequality varies across local labor markets in the United States. I find that within-group inequality distributions are largely predicted by the temporally and geographically uneven distribution of economic development and institutional configurations. Third, I examine within-group inequality in a cross-national comparative perspective. I find that within-group inequality is largely responsible for inequality change in high income countries, and that within-group inequality is responsive to growth of globalization, deindustrialization, and the decay of collective institutional configurations. In total, these findings assess theoretically important, but understudied, mechanisms of within-group inequality and bridge within-group inequality research to macrocomparative stratification research. |
