take-all labor markets result from changes in technology, which have increased global demand for

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15.4 • Income Inequality: Measurement and Causes 375

“stars,”—whether the best CEO, doctor, basketball player, or actor. This global demand pushes salaries far above

productivity differences associated with educational differences. One way to measure this change is to take

workers' earnings with at least a four-year college bachelor’s degree (including those who went on and

completed an advanced degree) and divide them by workers' earnings with only a high school degree. The

result is that those in the 25–34 age bracket with college degrees earned about 1.85 times as much as high

school graduates in 2020, up from 1.59 times in 1995, according to U.S. Census data. Winner-take-all labor

market theory argues that the salary gap between the median and the top 1 percent is not due to educational

differences.
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