| Abstract: | We focus on the association between the institutional factor of union contract coverage rates among workers and the variation in income inequality across a set of sixty-four metropolitan areas of the United States for the years 1990, 2000, and 2010. We use market variables of relative skills and relative education and demographic variables of race and gender as controls in our regression models. We also specify a set of models that substitute right-to-work status for union contract coverage rates. Our primary finding is that union contract coverage rates are temporally consistent and significant negative covariates of income inequality, as measured by Gini coefficients, across the metropolitan areas. Further, metropolitan areas in right-to-work states have consistently and significantly higher levels of inequality than expected given the control variable effects. Our interpretation of the primary finding is that issues of labor power and class play a clearly important role in contributing to income inequality in the set of metropolitan areas used in the analysis. |
