This article aims to explain why inequality in fringe benefits has grown faster than wage inequality over the past four decades. We depart from previous income inequality research by studying benefits in addition to wages, but also by focusing on workplaces as the main drivers of benefit determination. We advance the argument that benefits determination is more organizationally embedded than wages mainly because workplaces have greater ability and incentive to alter benefits. Consequently, workplace compensation practices, including type of employment relations, are more important for benefits than for wages. Longitudinal linked employer–job administrative data on wages and voluntary benefits costs from the Employer Costs for Employee Compensation (ECEC) allow us to test these arguments, as well as examine why benefit inequality has dramatically increased. Results from variance decomposition reveal that between- and within-establishment inequality is higher in benefits than in wages, indicating that workplaces affect benefits more than wages. Regression results show that, as expected, establishment-level pay-settings affect benefits more than wages, and the decline in labor unions along with the liberalization of employment practices partly account for why benefit inequality increased at more than twice the rate of wage inequality.

中文翻译：

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工作场所薪酬实践和福利不平等的加剧

本文旨在解释为什么在过去 40 年中，附加福利不平等的增长速度快于工资不平等。我们与之前的收入不平等研究不同，除了研究工资之外，还研究福利，而且还关注工作场所作为福利决定的主要驱动因素。我们提出这样的论点，即福利决定比工资更具有组织性，主要是因为工作场所有更大的能力和动力来改变福利。因此，工作场所薪酬实践，包括雇佣关系的类型，对福利比对工资更重要。来自雇主雇员补偿成本（ECEC）的工资和自愿福利成本的纵向关联雇主-工作管理数据使我们能够检验这些论点，以及研究为什么福利不平等急剧增加。方差分解的结果表明，机构间和机构内的不平等在福利方面高于工资，表明工作场所对福利的影响大于对工资的影响。回归结果表明，正如预期的那样，机构层面的薪酬设置对福利的影响大于对工资的影响，工会的减少以及就业实践的自由化在一定程度上解释了为什么福利不平等的增长速度是工资不平等的两倍多。