The increasing proportion of men with low earnings in the United States

Abstract

Data from the 1967 through 1978 Current Population Surveys of the U.S. Bureau of the Census are used to analyze the proportion of men with annual and weekly earnings below a fixed low earnings threshold. Logit analysis is used to assess the impact of the level of education, experience, cyclical conditions, and cohort size on the proportion of low earners within education-experience categories. Particular interest is paid to the influence of the labor market entry of the baby boom. The evidence indicates that, after controlling for the independent variables, the proportion of adult males with low annual and weekly earnings has been growing substantially except among the most highly educated. © 1985 Population Association of America.