Citation

Bessudnov, Alexey (2010). 'No country for old men': age and earnings in post-Soviet Russia.

Abstract

Objective: The association between age & earnings in Russia differs dramatically from Western countries. In Russia men's earnings do not increase steeply with age & peak earlier. This paper describes the association between age & earnings in the course of market transition in Russia & explains the unusual shape of age-earnings profiles. Data & methods: I used the data from the nationally representative panel Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey for 1994-2006 (n=28650). Age-earnings profiles were modelled and analyzed with nonparametric & semiparametric regression. Main results: The association between age & earnings for Russian men was affected by age segregation in the labour market that emerged as a consequence of the structural economic change. Younger men tended to be employed in new sectors of economy with higher pay. For women the effect was weaker. Preliminary findings suggest that the same mechanism was at work in other post-socialist countries. Conclusion: Age is often used as a control variable in social stratification models, but researchers rarely focus on the effects of age by itself. Age & cohort inequalities were important in the course of market transition & should be given more attention in the literature.

Reference Type

Conference Paper

Year Published

2010

Author(s)

Bessudnov, Alexey